Civilizing Capitalism: The National Consumers' League, Women's Activism, and Labor Standards in the New Deal Era

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Univ of North Carolina Press, 2003 M07 11 - 408 páginas
Offering fresh insights into the history of labor policy, the New Deal, feminism, and southern politics, Landon Storrs examines the New Deal era of the National Consumers' League, one of the most influential reform organizations of the early twentieth century.

Founded in 1899 by affluent women concerned about the exploitation of women wage earners, the National Consumers' League used a strategy of "ethical consumption" to spark a successful movement for state laws to reduce hours and establish minimum wages for women. During the Great Depression, it campaigned to raise labor standards in the unregulated, non-union South, hoping to discourage the relocation of manufacturers to the region because of cheaper labor and to break the downward spiral of labor standards nationwide. Promoting regulation of men's labor as well as women's, the league shaped the National Recovery Administration codes and the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 but still battled the National Woman's Party, whose proposed equal rights amendment threatened sex-based labor laws.

Using the National Consumers' League as a window on the nation's evolving reform tradition, Civilizing Capitalism explores what progressive feminists hoped for from the New Deal and why, despite significant victories, they ultimately were disappointed.

 

Contenido

Introduction
1
1 Investigate Agitate Legislate
13
2 Toward Feminist Social Democracy
41
3 A Subtle Program Come Down from the North?
61
4 The Acid Test of the New Deal
91
5 Bucking the Bourbons
125
6 Agents of the New Deal
153
7 Ambiguous Victory
177
9 Always Democracy
229
Conclusion
253
National Consumers League Officers 1933 and 1941
259
Biographical Data on Fifty Consumers League Activists in the 1930s
263
Selected Landmarks in the History of Labor Standards Regulation
271
Notes
273
Bibliography
356
Derechos de autor

8 Reaction
207

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Acerca del autor (2003)

Landon R. Y. Storrs is associate professor of history at the University of Iowa.

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