Progressive Reform: Chicago and Cleveland

In their articles Shelton Stromquist and Maureen Flanagan search for answers to the source of progressive reform in Cleveland and  Chicago respectively during the late 18th and early 19^th century. Stromquist argues forcefully that, while middle class reformers are oftentimes recognized as the impetus behind reform, it was the upheaval generated by the working class that was the driving force behind the reform in Cleveland.[1]  Flanagan suggested that the real force behind reform in Chicago is the efforts of upper and middle class women that reach across class lines and successfully pushed the agenda of “municipal housekeeping.”[2] Flanagan and Stromquist help support the argument that the shaping of progressive reform in early 20^th century America cannot be narrowly attributed to one individual or special interest group.

Flanagan reviews the impact of the predominantly middle and upper-class City Club and Woman’s City Club in political reform in Chicago and concludes that the Woman’s City Club had a greater impact on significant reform.[3]  Men tended to view reform in the context of their roles in business and what impact any reform would have on business minimizing their ability to suggest meaningful reform.[4] Women on the other hand viewed the municipality and its issue as an extension of their family and viewed their roles as “municipal housekeepers,” allowing them to seek and propose more meaningful change while promoting alliances with women from many classes.[5]  The Flanagan text gives three examples of how the Woman’s City Club was able to organize to create reform in the areas of municipal sanitation, education and police power.

Instead of viewing garbage disposal as purely a business matter, the Woman’s City Club viewed it as a matter of health and sanitation for their families, leading them to much different conclusions than their male counterparts.  The women concluded that incineration was preferred to reduction and municipal ownership to private business contracts, which would ultimately result in a service that was not only economically feasible for the city, but also healthier for its residents.[6]

 Education reform was approached with even more passion by Woman’s City Club. Instead of focusing on the vocational training of students for industrial occupations the goal was to keep children in school as long as possible to improve the likelihood of their ability to find a better job. The women of Chicago tended to see the problem of education in a broader context.  Education of all children rich or poor, was not intended only to provide trained workers for industry, but to broadly expose them to “science, art, and to society in general.”[7]

Finally, the Woman’s City Club demonstrated its ability to influence reform in its response to the use of excessive police power in putting down workers strikes. Women from diverse class structures became actively involved not only in arguing against harsh efforts on the part of police to end strikes, but by actually walking the picket lines with strikers.[8] The Women’s organizations of Chicago proved very effective at coalescing women of all classes to promote reform built on the concept that “the community is one great family.”[9]

Stromquist put forth the argument that workers who had been impacted by class polarization were the driving force behind political reform.[10]  Middle class reformers provided the political connections to bring about the change but it was the intermittent working class upheaval that created the necessity for reform. Stromquist carefully ties the unrest across the ethnic working class, resulting in the “Streetcar Strikes of 1899,” to a change in the structure of party politics in Cleveland.[11] The strikes which were broadly supported by workers created a voting bloc disenfranchised from both the mainstream Republican and Democrat parties. This new voting bloc coalesced for Samuel Jones in a non-partisan campaign for Governor of Ohio.[12] Jones lost the race but the results from Cleveland opened the eyes of the Democratic Party to reforms that would bring this group of voters under their umbrella and allow Democrats to dominate Cleveland politics for fifteen years.[13] Working class masses were able to significantly influence mobilization around reform even though they lacked the political organizations to implement it themselves.[14]

It is arguably somewhat myopic to view progressive reform as attributable to one group or the other. The cross-class patrons of the Women’s City club of Chicago and the masses of workers from Cleveland are examples of two groups that were both able to influence the implementation of progressive reform in the early Twentieth Century.

---

[1] Stromquist, Shelton, “The Crucible of Class: Cleveland Politics and the Origins of Municipal Reform in the Progressive Era,”  Journal of Urban History, January 1997, 23:,  195

[2] Flanagan, Maureen A, “Gender and Urban Political Reform: The City Club and the Woman's City Club of Chicago in the Progressive Era,” The American Historical Review , Vol. 95, No. 4 (Oct., 1990), Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the American Historical Association, Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2163477, 1044,1048

[3] Ibid, 1050

[4] Ibid, 1038

[5] Ibid, 1048, 1050

[6] Ibid, 1037-1038

[7] Ibid, 1041

[8] Ibid, 1043

[9] Ibid, 1046

[10] Stromquist, 194

[11] Ibid, 200

[12] Ibid, 206

[13] Ibid, 204

[14] Ibid