The Nation. - Department of Government at Cornell University

June 5, 1995 The Nation. 799and London and married to a “promlnentbanker” who would later becomethe president of the Chicago Stock Exchange.I don’t think it’s accurate to referto these women as “middle class,” asSklar does throughout the book.Gendered politics are nonetheless classandrace-specific, and the politics of theHull-House reformers grew out of theirposition as pnvileged white women. Theycould afford the luxury not only of servantsbut of choosing whether or not tofight racism. They were sincerely anddeeply concerned with the plight of whlteworking-class women and children, andattracted to soc~alist alternatives. Butthey envisioned solutions that would increasetheir own power in the processnothand the rems of power to thosebelow them.Gender, I am arguing, was not a surrogatefor class politics as in Sklar’sportrayal, but integral to It. The “women’spolitics” depicted here was not classneutral or above class politics, but ratherthe reverse. It was a way of shoring upelite management of U.S. society in thename of helping working-class women,out of a sincere commitment to tamingindustrial exploitation but also in serviceto the aggrandizement of state power byelite white women-who, like welfare“experts” today, believed they kne whatwas best for working-class women.I keep wondering whether I might haveended up liking Florence Kelley more ifSklar’s approach had been less uncritical.That way, I might have been more able toappreciate the ways in which Kelley didgive much of her hfe to helping workingclasswomen. At the same time I alsowonder ifKelley’s polltlcs might havebeen better on some fronts than they aredepicted here. What was her position onracism, for example? Curiously, in a long,detailed book sweeping through latenineteenth-centuryreform, Sklar neverdiscusses the racial polit~cs of Kelley andher circle.Sklar’s biography does convey a sensethat Kelley’s community of womenfriends was like a maglc circle outside ofwhich she couldn’t step without losmgher powers. Beyond it lay the vast worldof working-class men and women whoquite simply had different political goals.The evidence here is very persuas~ve thatalmost every time Kelley sought to “help”white working-class women, they had adifferent approach in mind. ElizabethMorgan, for example, a prominent Chicagotrade unionist, rejected Kelley’s proposalthat the Illinors Woman’s AlllanceAntisemttlsm, Its Hlstory and CausesBernard h eIntroductlon by Roberr S. Wlstrichb e ’ s controversial magnum opus, orlglnallypubllshed In France In 1894, examines the dlfferentfaces of antlsemltism from Greco-Roman antiqulry IOthe end of the nmeteenth century. $10 paperThe Revhral ol IsraelRome and Jerusalem, the Last Nationah Quesr~onMoses HessTranslated from the German by Meyer WaxmanIntroduct~on by Melvln I. UrofskyImportant as the first book to give theoretlcalexpresslon to Zionlsm, The Revival ofIrraefwasonginally publlshed In 1862 $10 paperAmerlcan Zionlsmfrom Herzl to the HolocausrMelvln I. Urofsky“Musr readlng for anyone who would understandAmerlcan forelgn policy lnvolvemencs In the MII ddleEast ”“Chrisnan Science Monrtor. $1 5 paperAvailable at bookstores everywhere.Unlverslry of Nebraska Press publzshers ofBzJon Books Lmcoln NE 800-755-105Boas EvronA Selection of the J m h Book ClubA post-Zionist vlsion of Israel as a secular territorial state.“ . a lucid fonnuhhon of post-ZlonLst ldeology fm the generation of the1980s and 1930s ” “Inmattonal Iournal of Mlddle East Studles’I , an extremely dtte, bnlllant and Polverful book with a novel approach.a sober secular conceptton of ludasm ” “Maanu”Th cornpelllng book conveys the readerstralght UI the fiontlme ofthe battleraging tn Israel over the proper boundariesofthe national denti4 “ -Noah Lucas,Oxford Centre for Hebrew andJewish Studies288 pages, doth $29.95 hnp //w ld~m edurlupressAt boohstores orfiornOrdm 1-800-842-6736 PRESSBlSOfBOOK