One of America's foremost historians of women tells the story of Florence Kelley, a leading reformer in the Progressive Era. The book is also a political history of the United States during a period of transforming change, when women worked to end the abuses of unregulated industrial capitalism. This first of a two-volume series covers the first 40 years of Florence Kelley's life. 53 illustrations.

As head of the National Consumers' League from its founding in 1899 until her death in 1932, Florence Kelley led campaigns that reshaped the conditions under which goods were produced in the United States. She also worked to pass laws providing for an eight-hour workday, a minimum wage, the first federal health legislation for women and children, and abolition of child labor. An ally of W.E.B. DuBois, she was a founding member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and served on its board for twenty years. This volume collects nearly three hundred of Kelley's letters, written over the course of more than six decades. Rendered in Kelley's vivid, often combative prose, these letters also provide an intimate view into the personal life of a dedicated reformer who balanced her career with her responsibilities as a single mother of three children.

Florence Kelley (1859-1932) fought to implement child labor laws, minimum wages, maximum working hours, industrial health control, prenatal care to lower maternal and infant mortality. She was among the late 19th and early 20th centuries militant women, including Jane Addams, Julia Lathrop, Lillian Wald and others, who have come to be called social reformers. Her close friend and fellow worker, Josephine Goldmark (1877-1950), tells a sympathetic yet richly detailed story of Florence Kelley’s energetic life and accomplishments. At the turn of the 20th century and afterward, the 12-hour workday and the 7-day workweek prevailed in many industries. The sweatshop was commonplace. In most states women and young girls worked long hours unregulated by law. Child labor, beginning at age 10 or 12, was the normal pattern for the poor. That such social evils have largely disappeared is due in large part to the insistent and impatient crusading of Florence Kelley as Chief Inspector of Factories for Illinois; at Hull House in Chicago and the Henry Street Settlement in New York; as General Secretary of the National Consumers League; to establish the U.S. Children’s Bureau; in the National Woman Suffrage Association, the National Child Labor Committee and the General Federation of Women’s Clubs. Florence Kelley worked with the law, especially with Boston lawyer Louis D. Brandeis, spent herself tirelessly in research to document the legal basis for shorter working hours for women, an investigation now famous as the “Brandeis Brief.” Indignant and eloquent, she stimulated the investigation of the use of radium in luminous paint, to end deaths from poisoning of dial painters in watch factories. “When Mrs. Kelley began her career as chief factory inspector in Illinois in 1893 there were no minimum wage laws. The 12-hour-day and 7-day-week prevailed in the steel industry. Sweat shops were legion. Tenement home work which enlisted mothers and children at low wages and long hours was the rule. These were the evils which Mrs. Kelley fought as a pioneer. In these pages Josephine Goldmark, her friend, associate and fellow worker, brings home to us in simple and vivid language the story of that long, patient struggle which paved the way for later reforms.” — Louis Stark, The New York Times “A more sympathetic biographer for the late Florence Kelley could scarcely have been found than the scholarly woman who was her co-worker during thirty of the forty years of her immensely active public career. Josephine Goldmark’s life of Mrs. Kelley is fine alike for the delicacy of its insights into her colleague’s basic motivations and for its tact in presenting the controversial aspects of her life and of the important legislative reforms in which she played a decisive role.” — Louise M. Young, The American Historical Review “Impatient Crusader is certainly a perfect title for a biography of Florence Kelley... [it] provides exciting reading as it traces the work of a great woman in many of the social reforms of the first half of the twentieth century.” — Helen R. Wright, Social Service Review “The interesting life-story of Florence Kelley, one of the militant, dedicated women of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This book, by one of her fellow workers, makes vivid the early crusades for child labor laws, minimum wages, maximum hours, and industrial health control.” — Current History “[An] excellent biography of Mrs. Kelley and her times.” — Irving Dilliard, Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society

Women reformers in the United States and Germany maintained a brisk dialogue between 1885 and 1933. Drawing on one another's expertise, they sought to alleviate a wide array of social injustices generated by industrial capitalism, such as child labor and the exploitation of women in the workplace. This book presents and interprets documents from that exchange, most previously unknown to historians, which show how these interactions reflected the political cultures of the two nations. On both sides of the Atlantic, women reformers pursued social justice strategies. The documents discussed here reveal the influence of German factory legislation on debates in the United States, point out the differing contexts of the suffrage movement, compare pacifist and antipacifist reactions of women to World War I, and trace shifts in the feminist movements of both countries after the war. Social Justice Feminists in the United States and Germany provides insight into the efforts of American and German women over half a century of profound social change. Through their dialogue, these women explicate their larger political cultures and the place they occupied in them.

Jane Addams's early attempt to empower the people with information

This group biography explores the lives, work, and personal relations of nine white, middle- and upper-middle-class women who were involved in the first decade of Chicago's premier social settlement. This "galaxy of stars"--as they were called in their own day--were active in innumerable political, social, and religious reform efforts. The Women of Hull House refutes the humanistic interpretation of the social settlement movement. Its spiritual base is highlighted as the author describes it as the practical/ethical side of the social gospel movement and as an attempt to transform late nineteenth-century evangelical and doctrinal Christian religion. While the women of Hull House differed from one another in their theological beliefs and were often critical of orthodox Christianity, they were motivated by Christian ideals. By showing the interconnections of spirituality, vocation, and friendship, the author argues that individual actions for social changes must take place within communities which provide a level of uniting vision yet allow for diverse actions and viewpoints.

A penetrating, character-filled history “in the manner of David McCullough” (WSJ), revealing the deep roots of our tormented present-day politics. Democracy was broken. Or that was what many Americans believed in the decades after the Civil War. Shaken by economic and technological disruption, they sought safety in aggressive, tribal partisanship. The results were the loudest, closest, most violent elections in U.S. history, driven by vibrant campaigns that drew our highest-ever voter turnouts. At the century's end, reformers finally restrained this wild system, trading away participation for civility in the process. They built a calmer, cleaner democracy, but also a more distant one. Americans' voting rates crashed and never fully recovered. This is the origin story of the “normal” politics of the 20th century. Only by exploring where that civility and restraint came from can we understand what is happening to our democracy today. The Age of Acrimony charts the rise and fall of 19th-century America's unruly politics through the lives of a remarkable father-daughter dynasty. The radical congressman William “Pig Iron” Kelley and his fiery, Progressive daughter Florence Kelley led lives packed with drama, intimately tied to their nation's politics. Through their friendships and feuds, campaigns and crusades, Will and Florie trace the narrative of a democracy in crisis. In telling the tale of what it cost to cool our republic, historian Jon Grinspan reveals our divisive political system's enduring capacity to reinvent itself.

Weeds renders in decidedly feminist terms the harsh life of tobacco sharecroppers in Kentucky in the early 20th century.