Disappointed at the results of their intervention in the European war, Americans turned inward in the postwar decade. They repudiated all things allegedly "foreign," including radical political ideas and, especially, immigrants. The witch-hunting, frenzied "red scare" that rocked the country in the immediate postwar months was capped by the arrest and eventual execution of the Italian anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti. A revived Ku Klux Klan vented its hatred on Catholic and Jewish newcomers, as well as on blacks. Three centuries of virtually unrestricted immigration to the United States came to a halt with the passage of the restrictive Immigration Act of 1924. The prohibition "experiment" divided "wets" from "drys." In religion, fundamentalists warred against modernists, most famously in the Scopes "monkey trial" in Tennessee. "Flappers" flamboyantly flaunted the new freedom of young women, one of whose champions was Margaret Sanger, pioneer of the birth-control movement. Meanwhile, a high-mass-consumption economy began to flower fully, typified by the booming automobile industry and by the emergence of advertising and the huge entertainment industries of radio and the movies. A literary renaissance blossomed, led by F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, Sherwood Anderson, Eugene O'Neill, Sinclair Lewis, and Ernest Hemingway. Many of these writers sharply criticized the materialist culture of the decade, symbolized by rampant speculation on the stock market, which crashed in 1929.

William A. White Condemns Deportations (1922)
Russian bolshevism inspired a wave of hysteria, which swept the United States after World War I and continued into 1920-1921. Strikes, bomb explosions, and other acts of violence were branded the work of alien "reds," scores of whom were rounded up and deported. In 1919, 249 undesirables were loaded onto a ship known as the "Soviet ark" and bundled off to the Russian "paradise." Guy Empey, a popular American war-time author who achieved celebrity by writing of his experiences in the British army, applauded the "deportation delirium," by writing: "My motto for the Reds is S.O.S.--ship or shoot. I believe we should place them all on a ship of stone, with sails of lead, and that their first stopping place should be hell." By early 1920 newspaper editor William Allen White was calling for sanity. In this excerpt, does he call for absolute freedom of speech? What does he think is the greatest harm done by the indiscriminate persecution of "radicals"?

The Attorney General seems to be seeing red. He is rounding up every manner of radical in the country; every man who hopes for a better world is in danger of deportation by the Attorney General. The whole business is un-American. There are certain rules fundamental which should govern in the treason cases.

First, it should be agreed that a man should believe what he chooses.

Second, it should be agreed that when he preaches violence he is disturbing the peace and should be put in jail. Whether he preaches violence in politics, business, or religion, whether he advocates murder and arson and pillage for gain or for political ends, he is violating the common law and should be squelched--jailed until he is willing to quit advocating force in a democracy.

Third, he should be allowed to say what he pleases so long as he advocates legal constitutional methods of procedure. Just because a man does not believe this government is good is no reason why he should be deported.

Abraham Lincoln did not believe this government was all right seventy-five years ago. He advocated changes, but he advocated constitutional means, and he had a war with those who advocated force to maintain the government as it was.

Ten years ago [Theodore] Roosevelt advocated great changes in our American life--in our Constitution, in our social and economic life. Most of the changes he advocated have been made, but they were made in the regular legal way. He preached no force. And if a man desires to preach any doctrine under the shining sun, and to advocate the realization of his vision by lawful, orderly, constitutional means--let him alone. If he is Socialist, anarchist, or Mormon, and merely preaches his creed and does not preach violence, he can do no harm. For the folly of his doctrine will be its answer.

The deportation business is going to make martyrs of a lot of idiots whose cause is not worth it.

Emporia (Kansas) Gazette, January 8, 1920.

Bartolomeo Vanzetti Condemns Judge Thayer (1927)
The most notorious case associated with the red scare involved Nicola Sacco, a shoemaker, and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, a fish peddler. They were convicted of the 1920 murder of a paymaster and his guard at South Braintree, Massachusetts. When arrested, both men were carrying revolvers, and both told numerous lies. Moreover, they were both aliens (Italians), atheists, conscientious objectors ("draft dodgers"), and radicals. Their conviction by a jury in the anti-red atmosphere of the time, despite serious flaws in the evidence, raised grave doubts about the fairness of the trial and the presiding judge, Webster Thayer. Many critics believed that the accused had been found guilty of radicalism rather than murder--that they were martyrs in the "class struggle." Numerous demonstrations in their favor were staged by radical groups in foreign countries. After six years of fruitless appeal, the conviction of Sacco and Vanzetti was upheld, and they were condemned to death in the electric chair. Vanzetti's defiant words to Judge Thayer upon being sentenced are classic. Why, in his view, was he being executed?

You see, it is seven years that we are in jail. What we have suffered during these seven years no human tongue can say; and yet you see me before you, not trembling, you see me looking you in your eyes straight, not blushing, nor changing color, not ashamed or in fear.

Eugene Debs [the Socialist] say that not even a dog--something like that--not even a dog that kill the chickens would have been found guilty by American jury with the evidence that the Commonwealth have produced against us. I say that not even a leprous dog would have his appeal refused two times by the Supreme Court of Massachusetts--not even a leprous dog. . . .

We have proved that there could not have been another Judge on the face of the earth more prejudiced and more cruel than you [Thayer] have been against us. We have proven that. Still they refuse the new trial. We know, and you know in your heart, that you have been against us from the very beginning, before you see us. Before you see us you already know that we were radicals, that we were underdogs, that we were the enemy of the institution that you can believe in good faith in their goodness--I don't want to condemn that--and that it was easy on the time of the first trial to get a verdict of guiltiness.

We know that you have spoke yourself and have spoke your hostility against us, and your despisement against us with friends of yours on the train, at the University Club of Boston, on the Golf Club of Worcester, Massachusetts. I am sure that if the people who know all what you say against us would have the civil courage to take the stand, maybe your Honor--I am sorry to say this because you are an old man, and I have an old father--but maybe you would be beside us in good justice at this time. . . .

This is what I say: I would not wish to a dog or to a snake, to the most low and misfortunate creature of the earth--I would not wish to any of them what I have had to suffer for things that I am not guilty of. But my conviction is that I have suffered for things that I am guilty of. I am suffering because I am a radical and indeed I am a radical; I have suffered because I was an Italian, and indeed I am an Italian; I have suffered more for my family and for my beloved than for myself; but I am so convinced to be right that if you could execute me two times, and if I could be reborn two other times, I would live again to do what I have done already.

The Sacco-Vanzetti Case; Transcript of the Record of the Trial . . . and Subsequent Proceedings, 1920-27 (5 vols.) (New York, 1928-1929), pp. 4898-4899, 4904.

Walter Lippmann Pleads for Sacco and Vanzetti (1927)
Four days before the execution, scheduled for August 23, 1927, the militant New York World ran a full-page editorial, written by its chief editorial writer, pundit Walter Lippmann, pleading for a stay of execution. On what grounds did Lippmann base his appeal?

We recognize perfectly well that no government can with self-respect yield to the clamor of ignorance and sentimentality and partisanship. We realize perfectly well how much more difficult it is for the Governor to commute these sentences in the face of organized threats and of sporadic outrages. It will take greatness of mind and heart for the Governor and his Council to choose the wiser course. . . .

If Governor Fuller commutes these sentences, the Communists and Anarchists will shout that they coerced him. They will make the most of it for a day, a week, a month. The extremists on the other side will call him a weakling, and sneer. They will make the most of it for a day, a week, a month. But in the meantime moderate and disinterested opinion, which is never very talkative, will mobilize behind him and will recognize that he did a wise and a brave thing. . . .

Therefore we plead with the Governor to see this matter in the light, not of to-day and to-morrow, but of years to come. We plead with him to stay the execution because it will defeat the only purpose for which the death penalty can be exacted. We plead with him to remember that, however certain he may be in his own mind that the two men are guilty, no such certainty exists in the minds of his fellow-citizens. . . .

The Sacco-Vanzetti case is clouded and obscure. It is full of doubt. The fairness of the trial raises doubt. The evidence raises doubt. The inadequate review of the evidence raises doubt. The Governor's inquiry has not appeased these doubts. The report of his Advisory Committee has not settled these doubts. Everywhere there is doubt so deep, so pervasive, so unsettling, that it cannot be denied and it cannot be ignored. No man, we submit, should be put to death where so much doubt exists.

The real solution of this case would be a new trial before a new judge under new conditions. Fervently we hope that the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts will decide that under the law such a new trial can be held. But if it does not, then to the Governor, to his Council, and to the friends of justice in Massachusetts we make this plea:

Stay the execution. Wait. The honor of an American Commonwealth is in your hands. Listen, and do not put an irrevocable end upon a case that is so full of doubt. It is human to err, and it is possible in the sight of God that the whole truth is not yet known.

[As the condemned men were being prepared for execution, mobs stoned U.S. embassies in European and South American capitals, and aroused workers went on strike in Italy, France, and the United States. As Sacco was strapped to the electric chair, he cried out in Italian, "Long live anarchy!" Some five months earlier a reporter for the New York World had visited Vanzetti in his cell and recorded the following remarks by the prisoner, which were published in the World on May 13, 1927, and which have become famous:

"If it had not been for these thing, I might have live out my life, talking at street corners to scorning men. I might have die, unmarked, unknown, a failure. Now we are not a failure. This is our career and our triumph. Never in our full life can we hope to do such work for tolerance, for justice, for man's understanding of man, as now we do by an accident.

"Our word--our lives--our pains--nothing! The taking of our lives--lives of a good shoemaker and a poor fish peddler--all! That last moment belong to us--that agony is our triumph!"]

New York World, August 19, 1927. A longer extract appears in R. P. Weeks, ed., Commonwealth vs. Sacco and Vanzetti (1958), pp. 240-246.

Tar-Bucket Terror in Texas (1921)
The hysterical atmosphere of the red scare was also partly responsible for the revival of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s. The bed sheets, hoods, and lashes were old, but the principles, aside from hatred of blacks, were new. The revamped Klan was anti-foreign, anti-Catholic, anti-Jewish, and anticommunist. It professed to uphold Christianity, the Bible, prohibition, clean movies, the law, the Constitution, the public schools, the home, marriage vows. It undertook to persuade unchaste people, especially women, to mend their ways by giving them a dose of the lash and a coat of tar and feathers. The press reported in 1921 that an African-American bellboy had been branded on the forehead with the letters KKK; that in Florida an Episcopal archdeacon had been whipped, tarred, and feathered; and that there had been forty-three tar-bucket parties in Texas in six months. The Houston Chronicle here addresses a protest to the Klan members. Does it register any sympathy for the Klan? What does it see as the Klan's greatest outrages?

Boys, you'd better disband. You'd better take your sheets, your banners, your masks, your regalia, and make one fine bonfire.

Without pausing to argue over the objects you have in mind, it is sufficient to say that your methods are hopelessly wrong. Every tradition of social progress is against them. They are opposed to every principle on which this Government is founded. They are out of keeping with civilized life.

You seem to forget that the chief advantage of democracy is to let in the daylight, to prevent secret punishment, to insure a fair hearing for every person, to make impossible that kind of tyranny which can only flourish in the dark.

The newspapers of last Sunday were disgraced with the account of four illegal, unnecessary, and wholly ineffectual outrages. Without assuming that your organization was directly responsible for any or all of them, it was, in large measure, indirectly responsible. Your organization has made the thought of secretly organized violence fashionable.

It matters not who can get into your organization or who is kept out; any group of men can ape your disguise, your methods, and your practices. If outrages occur for which you are not accountable--and they will--you have no way of clearing yourselves, except by throwing off your disguise and invoking that publicity you have sought to deny. Your role of masked violence, of purification by stealth, of reform by terrorism is an impossible one. Your position is such that you must accept responsibility for every offense which smacks of disguised tyranny. . . .

Who was responsible for the Tenaha case, where a woman was stripped naked and then covered with tar and feathers? Has there ever been any crime committed in this state so horrible or one that brought such shame on Texas? Is there any member of the Ku Klux Klan in Texas so pure and holy that he can condemn even the vilest woman to such disgrace and torture? Masked men did it, and the world was told in press dispatches that they were the hooded Klansmen of Texas.

If that outrage was done by Ku Klux Klansmen, then every decent man who was inveigled into the order should resign immediately. If it was not the work of the real order, its members should disband because of this one act, if for no other reason.

The Ku Klux Klan, as recently rejuvenated, serves no useful purpose. On the other hand, it makes room for innumerable abuses. The community--meaning the whole nation--is against it, and the community will grow more resolutely against it as time goes on. Those who brought it into being, no matter what their intentions, would better bring about its dissolution before the storm breaks.

Houston Chronicle, quoted in Literary Digest 70 (August 27, 1921): 12.

A Methodist Editor Clears the Klan (1923)
The brutal excesses of the Ku Klux Klan (or its imitators) brought it into disrepute, and by the mid-1920s it was rapidly disintegrating. For several years, however, with its hundreds of thousands of members, it remained a potent political force. The Reverend Bob Shuler (Methodist), editor of Shuler's Magazine and the fundamentalist pastor of a large Los Angeles church, published the following advertisement in the Eugene (Oregon) Register. What biases formed the basis of his pro-Klan views? Is vigilantism ever justified? How valid is the author's comparison of the Klan with the Knights of Columbus, an American Roman Catholic society for men, founded in 1882?

This editor has repeatedly affirmed privately and publicly that he is not a member of the Ku Klux or any other secret organization. But when it comes to secret societies, he sees no difference absolutely between the Ku Klux and many others, the Knights of Columbus, for instance. The Knights of Columbus has an oath, just as binding, or more so, than the Ku Klux oath. Moreover, the Knights of Columbus' oath is not one-half so American as the Ku Klux. If you charge that the Ku Klux has put over mobs, I answer that the Knights of Columbus has put over two mobs to where any other secret organization on earth has ever put over one.

This editor has been favored recently by being permitted to look over documentary evidence as to the tenets, principles, and aims of the Ku Klux Klan. He finds that this organization stands with positive emphasis for Americanism as opposed to foreign idealism; for the principles of the Christian religion as opposed to Roman Catholicism and infidelity; for the American public schools and for the placing of the Holy Bible in the schoolrooms of this nation; for the enforcement of the laws upon the statute books and for a wholesome respect for the Constitution of the United States; for the maintenance of virtue among American women, sobriety and honor among American men, and for the eradication of all agencies and influences that would threaten the character of our children. So the principles of the Klan are not so damnable as pictured, it would seem.

This organization is opposing the most cunning, deceitful, and persistent enemy that Americanism and Protestant Christianity have ever had--the Jesuits. Speaking of "invisible empires," of forces that creep through the night and do their dirty work under cover, influences that are set going in the secret places of darkness, the Jesuits are the finished product. They have burned, killed, defamed, blackmailed, and ruined their enemies by the hundreds. History reeks with it. Though I disagree with the logic of the Klan, the members of that organization declare that they can only fight such a foe by using his own fire.

As to the charge that the Ku Klux Klan has functioned in mob violence in their efforts to correct conditions, I have this to say: I am convinced that most of the mobs reported have not been ordered and directed by the Klan as an organization. I am moreover convinced that many of them have been put over by forces opposed to the Klan and for the purpose of seeking to place the guilt for mob rule upon the Klan. The most of these mobs have been, according to investigation, not Ku Klux mobs at all, but gatherings of indignant citizens, bent on correcting conditions that the officers of the law refused to correct. The way to cause the Ku Klux to retire from the field is for the officers of the law to take that field and occupy it.

The Ku Klux has the same right to exist so long as it obeys the law that any other organization has. We have not heard of any investigation of the Knights of Columbus, although their un-American oaths are historic and their mob activities have been repeatedly published and heralded from platforms far and near.

Eugene Register, quoted in Literary Digest 76 (January 20, 1923): 18-19.

A German Observes Bootlegging (1928)
Before the end of World War I most of the states had decreed the prohibition of alcoholic beverages. Nationwide prohibition, authorized by the Eighteenth Amendment in 1919, resulted largely from the spirit of self-sacrifice aroused by the war. A militant majority was thus able to force its will upon a large and vocal minority, especially in the big cities, where the foreign-born population was accustomed to the regular consumption of alcohol. The "Sea Devil" Felix von Luckner, a German naval hero who had destroyed some $25 million worth of Allied commerce with his raider the Seeadler (Sea Eagle) during World War I, visited the United States as a lecturer and recorded his curious experiences with alcohol. What did he see as the good and bad features of prohibition? What conditions made enforcement peculiarly difficult?

My first experience with the ways of prohibition came while we were being entertained by friends in New York. It was bitterly cold. My wife and I rode in the rumble seat of the car, while the American and his wife, bundled in furs, sat in front. Having wrapped my companion in pillows and blankets so thoroughly that only her nose showed, I came across another cushion that seemed to hang uselessly on the side. "Well," I thought, "this is a fine pillow; since everyone else is so warm and cozy, I might as well do something for my own comfort. This certainly does no one any good hanging on the wall." Sitting on it, I gradually noticed a dampness in the neighborhood that soon mounted to a veritable flood. The odor of fine brandy told me I had burst my host's peculiar liquor flask.

In time, I learned that not everything in America was what it seemed to be. I discovered, for instance, that a spare tire could be filled with substances other than air, that one must not look deeply into certain binoculars, and that the Teddy Bears that suddenly acquired tremendous popularity among the ladies very often had hollow metal stomachs.

"But," it might be asked, "where do all these people get the liquor?" Very simple. Prohibition has created a new, a universally respected, a well-beloved, and a very profitable occupation, that of the bootlegger who takes care of the importation of the forbidden liquor. Everyone know this, even the powers of government. But this profession is beloved because it is essential, and it is respected because its pursuit is clothed with an element of danger and with a sporting risk. . . .

Yet it is undeniable that prohibition has in some respects been signally successful. The filthy saloons, the gin mills which formerly flourished on every corner and in which the laborer once drank off half his wages, have disappeared. Now he can instead buy his own car, and ride off for a weekend or a few days with his wife and children in the country or at the sea. But, on the other hand, a great deal of poison and methyl alcohol has taken the place of the good old pure whiskey. The number of crimes and misdemeanors that originated in drunkenness has declined. But by contrast, a large part of the population has become accustomed to disregard and to violate the law without thinking. The worst is that, precisely as a consequence of the law, the taste for alcohol has spread ever more widely among the youth. The sporting attraction of the forbidden and the dangerous leads to violations. My observations have convinced me that many fewer would drink were it not illegal.

This Was America, edited by Oscar Handlin, pp. 495-496, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1949, 1969. 

Fiorello La Guardia Pillories Prohibition (1926)
Wholesale violations of the prohibition law became so notorious that in 1926 a Senate judiciary subcommittee held extended hearings. It uncovered shocking conditions. Stubby, turbulent, fiery Fiorello ("The Little Flower") La Guardia, then a congressman from New York and later to be the controversial reform mayor of New York City, expressed characteristically vigorous views. Which of his statistics seem least susceptible of proof? Which of his arguments would probably carry the most weight with the average taxpayer?

It is impossible to tell whether prohibition is a good thing or a bad thing. It has never been enforced in this country.

There may not be as much liquor in quantity consumed to-day as there was before prohibition, but there is just as much alcohol.

At least 1,000,000 quarts of liquor is consumed each day in the United States. In my opinion such an enormous traffic in liquor could not be carried on without the knowledge, if not the connivance, of the officials entrusted with the enforcement of the law.

I am for temperance; that is why I am for modification.

I believe that the percentage of whisky drinkers in the United States now is greater than in any other country of the world. Prohibition is responsible for that. . . .

At least $1,000,000,000 a year is lost to the National Government and the several states and counties in excise taxes. The liquor traffic is going on just the same. This amount goes into the pockets of bootleggers and into the pockets of the public officials in the shape of graft. . . .

I will concede that the saloon was odious, but now we have delicatessen stores, pool rooms, drug stores, millinery shops, private parlors, and 57 other varieties of speakeasies selling liquor and flourishing.

I have heard of $2,000 a year prohibition agents who run their own cars with liveried chauffeurs.

It is common talk in my part of the country that from $7.50 to $12 a case is paid in graft from the time the liquor leaves the 12-mile limit until it reaches the ultimate consumer. There seems to be a varying market price for this service created by the degree of vigilance or the degree of greed of the public officials in charge.

It is my calculation that at least $1,000,000 a day is paid in graft and corruption to Federal, state, and local officers. Such a condition is not only intolerable, but it is demoralizing and dangerous to organized government. . . .

The Prohibition Enforcement Unit has entirely broken down. It is discredited; it has become a joke. Liquor is sold in every large city. . . .

Only a few days ago I charged on the floor of the House that 350 cases of liquor of a seizure of 1,500 made by Federal officials and stored in the Federal building at Indianapolis, Ind., had been removed. The Department of Justice, under date of April 9, 1926, confirmed my charge. The Attorney General admits that since this liquor was in the possession of the Federal authorities in the Federal building at Indianapolis, 330 cases are missing. If bootleggers can enter Federal buildings to get liquor, the rest can be easily imagined. . . .

I have been in public office for a great many years. I have had the opportunity to observe first the making of the present prohibition laws as a member of Congress, and later as president of the Board of Aldermen of the largest city in this country its attempted enforcement. In order to enforce prohibition in New York City I estimated at the time would require a police force of 250,000 men and a force of 200,000 men to police the police.

Hearings before the Subcommittee of the Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. Senate, Sixty-ninth Congress, First Session (April 5-24, 1926), on . . . Bills to Amend the National Prohibition Act, vol. 1, pp. 649-651.

The WCTU Upholds Prohibition (1926)Mrs. Ella A. Boole, president of the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), appeared before the same Senate judiciary subcommittee. Hailing from the same metropolitan area as La Guardia, Boole was a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), held a Ph.D. from the University of Wooster, and was a Presbyterian. She had run unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate on the Prohibition ticket in 1920. What values underlay her insistence on enforcing unpopular laws, despite widespread flouting?

You have listened to testimony of shocking conditions due to corruption of officials, and lack of enforcement, some of which suggested no remedy except a surrender to those who violate the law, while the propaganda of all these organizations is encouraging continued violation. Permit me to show another side of the picture, and propose that instead of lowering our standards we urge that the law be strengthened, and in that way notice be served on law violators that America expects her laws to be enforced and to be obeyed. . . .

Enforcement has never had a fair trial. Political patronage, leakage through the permit system, connivance at the violation of law, and spread of the propaganda that it is not obligatory to obey a law unless you believe in it, and to the effect that the responsibility for the enforcement of law rested with the officers alone, when it should be shared by the individual citizen, have materially hindered the work of enforcement--all this with the result that the United States has not derived from prohibition what it would have derived had all the people observed the law and had there been hearty cooperation of the press and the people. . . .

It is not easy to get at the facts about the effect of prohibition on health, morals, and economic [life] because they are interwoven with other causes, and partial statistics may be misleading. But the elimination of a preventable cause of poverty, crime, tuberculosis, the diseases of middle life, unhappy homes, and financial depression brings results insofar as the law is observed and enforced. . . .

The closing of the open saloon with its doors swinging both ways, an ever-present invitation for all to drink--men, women, and boys--is an outstanding fact, and no one wants it to return. It has resulted in better national health, children are born under better conditions, homes are better, and the mother is delivered from the fear of a drunken husband. There is better food. Savings-banks deposits have increased, and many a man has a bank account to-day who had none in the days of the saloon.

The increase in home owning is another evidence that money wasted in drink is now used for the benefit of the family. Improved living conditions are noticeable in our former slum districts. The Bowery and Hell's Kitchen* are transformed.

Safety-first campaigns on railroads and in the presence of the increasing number of automobiles are greatly strengthened by prohibition.

The prohibition law is not the only law that is violated. Traffic laws, anti-smuggling laws, as well as the Volstead [prohibition] Act, are held in contempt. It is the spirit of the age.

Life-insurance companies have long known that drinkers were poor risks, but they recognize the fact that prohibition has removed a preventable cause of great financial loss to them.

The wonderful advances in mechanics in the application of electricity and in transportation demand brains free from the fumes of alcohol, hence law enforcement and law observance contribute to this progress. . . .

Your attention has been called to the failures. We claim these have been the result of lax enforcement. The machinery of enforcement should be strengthened.

[The federal enforcement machinery finally broke down, and the Eighteenth Amendment was repealed in 1933. Prohibition had done much good but at a staggering cost. In addition to the evils already noted, gangsterism was flourishing, and the courts and jails were clogged. With repeal, the control of liquor went back to state and local governments.]

*The Bowery and Hell's Kitchen were two notorious immigrant ghettos in turn-of-the-century New York.

Hearings before the Subcommittee of the Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. Senate, Sixty-ninth Congress, First Session (April 5-24, 1926), on . . . Bills to Amend the National Prohibition Act, vol. 1, pp. 1068-1071.

Henry Ford Discusses Manufacturing and Marketing (1922)
Henry Ford had little formal schooling, but he became the United States' most famous industrial genius. Beginning as a machine-shop apprentice and traveling repairman for a farm-machinery company, he built his first motorcar in 1896 and organized the Ford Motor Company seven years later. Its growth was phenomenal, as was the impact of the automobile on American life. Ford's manufacturing techniques, philosophy of labor relations, and marketing ideas were widely imitated. In the following excerpt from his autobiography, he discusses the early days of his industrial career. Which of his ideas were most innovative? Which seem most attractive today? Which seem most outdated?

In 1909 I announced one morning, without any previous warning, that in the future we were going to build only one model, that the model was going to be "Model T," and that the chassis would be exactly the same for all cars, and I remarked:

"Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black."

I cannot say that any one agreed with me. . . . A motor car was still regarded as something in the way of a luxury. The manufacturers did a good deal to spread this idea. Some clever persons invented the name "pleasure car" and the advertising emphasized the pleasure features. The sales people had ground for their objection and particularly when I made the following announcement:

I will build a motor car for the great multitude. It will be large enough for the family but small enough for the individual to run and care for. It will be constructed of the best materials, by the best men to be hired, after the simplest designs that modern engineering can devise. But it will be so low in price that no man making a good salary will be unable to own one--and enjoy with his family the blessing of hours of pleasure in God's great open spaces. . . .

The more economical methods of production did not begin all at once. They began gradually--just as we began gradually to make our own parts. "Model T" was the first motor that we made ourselves. The great economies began in assembling and then extended to other sections so that, while to-day we have skilled mechanics in plenty, they do not produce automobiles--they make it easy for others to produce them. Our skilled men are the tool makers, the experimental workmen, the machinists, and the pattern makers. They are as good as any men in the world--so good, indeed, that they should not be wasted in doing that which the machines they contrive can do better. The rank and file of men come to us unskilled; they learn their jobs within a few hours or a few days. If they do not learn within that time they will never be of any use to us. These men are, many of them, foreigners, and all that is required before they are taken on is that they should be potentially able to do enough work to pay the overhead charges on the floor space they occupy. They do not have to be able-bodied men. We have jobs that require great physical strength--although they are rapidly lessening; we have other jobs that require no strength whatsoever--jobs which, as far as strength is concerned, might be attended to by a child of three. . . .

A Ford car contains about five thousand parts--that is counting screws, nuts, and all. Some of the parts are fairly bulky and others are almost the size of watch parts. In our first assembling we simply started to put a car together at a spot on the floor and workmen brought to it the parts as they were needed in exactly the same way that one builds a house. When we started to make parts it was natural to create a single department of the factory to make that part, but usually one workman performed all of the operations necessary on a small part. The rapid press of production made it necessary to devise plans of production that would avoid having the workers falling over one another. The undirected worker spends more of his time walking about for materials and tools than he does in working; he gets small pay because pedestrianism is not a highly paid line.

The first step forward in assembly came when we began taking the work to the men instead of the men to the work. We now have two general principles in all operations--that a man shall never have to take more than one step, if possibly it can be avoided, and that no man need ever stoop over.

The principles of assembly are these:

1. Place the tools and the men in the sequence of the operation so that each component part shall travel the least possible distance while in the process of finishing.

2. Use work slides or some other form of carrier so that when a workman completes his operation, he drops the part always in the same place--which place must always be the most convenient place to his hand--and if possible have gravity carry the part to the next workman for his operation.

3. Use sliding assembling lines by which the parts to be assembled are delivered at convenient distances.

The net result of the application of these principles is the reduction of the necessity for thought on the part of the worker and the reduction of his movements to a minimum. He does as nearly as possible only one thing with only one movement.

The assembling of the chassis is, from the point of view of the non-mechanical mind, our most interesting and perhaps best known operation, and at one time it was an exceedingly important operation. We now [1922] ship out the parts for assembly at the point of distribution.

Along about April 1, 1913, we first tried the experiment of an assembly line. We tried it on assembling the fly-wheel magneto. We try everything in a little way first--we will rip out anything once we discover a better way, but we have to know absolutely that the new way is going to be better than the old before we do anything drastic.

I believe that this was the first moving line ever installed. The idea came in a general way from the overhead trolley that the Chicago packers use in dressing beef. We had previously assembled the fly-wheel magneto in the usual method. With one workman doing a complete job he could turn out from thirty-five to forty pieces in a nine-hour day, or about twenty minutes to an assembly. What he did alone was then spread into twenty-nine operations; that cut down the assembly time to thirteen minutes, ten seconds. Then we raised the height of the line eight inches--this was in 1914--and cut the time to seven minutes. Further experimenting with the speed that the work should move at cut the time down to five minutes. In short, the result is this: by the aid of scientific study one man is now able to do somewhat more than four did only a comparatively few years ago. That line established the efficiency of the method and we now use it everywhere. The assembling of the motor, formerly done by one man, is now divided into eighty-four operations--those men do the work that three times their number formerly did. In a short time we tried out the plan on the chassis.

About the best we had done in stationary chassis assembly was an average of twelve hours and twenty-eight minutes per chassis. We tried the experiment of drawing the chassis with a rope and windlass down a line two hundred fifty feet long. Six assemblers traveled with the chassis and picked up the parts from piles placed along the line. This rough experiment reduced the time to five hours fifty minutes per chassis. In the early part of 1914 we elevated the assembly line. We had adopted the policy of "man-high" work; we had one line twenty-six and three quarter inches and another twenty-four and one half inches from the floor--to suit squads of different heights. The waist-high arrangement and a further subdivision of work so that each man had fewer movements cut down the labour time per chassis to one hour thirty-three minutes. Only the chassis was then assembled in the line. The body was placed on in "John R. Street"--the famous street that runs through our Highland Park factories. Now the line assembles the whole car.

It must not be imagined, however, that all this worked out as quickly as it sounds. The speed of the moving work had to be carefully tried out; in the fly-wheel magneto we first had a speed of sixty inches per minute. That was too fast. Then we tried eighteen inches per minute. That was too slow. Finally we settled on forty-four inches per minute. The idea is that a man must not be hurried in his work--he must have every second necessary but not a single unnecessary second. We have worked out speeds for each assembly, for the success of the chassis assembly caused us gradually to overhaul our entire method of manufacturing and to put all assembling in mechanically driven lines. The chassis assembling line, for instance, goes at a pace of six feet per minute; the front axle assembly line goes at one hundred eighty-nine inches per minute. In the chassis assembling are forty-five separate operations or stations. The first men fasten four mudguard brackets in the chassis frame; the motor arrives on the tenth operation and so on in detail. Some men do only one or two small operations, others do more. The man who places a part does not fasten it--the part may not be fully in place until after several operations later. The man who puts in a bolt does not put on the nut; the man who puts on the nut does not tighten it. On operation number thirty-four the budding motor gets its gasoline; it has previously received lubrication; on operation number forty-four the radiator is filled with water, and on operation number forty-five the car drives out onto John R. Street. . . .

Our policy is to reduce the price, extend the operations, and improve the article. You will notice that the reduction of price comes first. We have never considered any costs as fixed. Therefore we first reduce the price to a point where we believe more sales will result. Then we go ahead and try to make the price. We do not bother about the costs. The new price forces the costs down. . . .

The payment of high wages fortunately contributes to the low costs because the men become steadily more efficient on account of being relieved of outside worries. The payment of five dollars a day for an eight-hour day was one of the finest cost-cutting moves we ever made, and the six-dollar day wage is cheaper than the five. How far this will go, we do not know.

We have always made a profit at the prices we have fixed and, just as we have no idea how high wages will go, we also have no idea how low prices will go, but there is no particular use in bothering on that point. The tractor, for instance, was first sold for $750, then at $850, then at $625, and the other day we cut it 37 per cent to $395. . . .

The standardization that effects large economies for the consumer results in profits of such gross magnitude to the producer that he can scarcely know what to do with his money. But his effort must be sincere, painstaking, and fearless. Cutting out a half-a-dozen models is not standardizing. It may be, and usually is, only the limiting of business, for if one is selling on the ordinary basis of profit--that is, on the basis of taking as much money away from the consumer as he will give up--then surely the consumer ought to have a wide range of choice.

Standardization, then, is the final stage of the process. We start with [the] consumer, work back through the design, and finally arrive at manufacturing. The manufacturing becomes a means to the end of service.

It is important to bear this order in mind. As yet, the order is not thoroughly understood. The price relation is not understood. The notion persists that prices ought to be kept up. On the contrary, good business--large consumption--depends on their going down.

And here is another point. The service must be the best you can give. It is considered good manufacturing practice, and not bad ethics, occasionally to change designs so that old models will become obsolete and new ones will have to be bought either because repair parts for the old cannot be had, or because the new model offers a new sales argument which can be used to persuade a consumer to scrap what he has and buy something new. We have been told that this is good business, that it is clever business, that the object of business ought to be to get people to buy frequently and that it is bad business to try to make anything that will last forever, because when once a man is sold he will not buy again.

Our principle of business is precisely to the contrary. We cannot conceive how to serve the consumer unless we make for him something that, as far as we can provide, will last forever. We want to construct some kind of a machine that will last forever. It does not please us to have a buyer's car wear out or become obsolete. We want the man who buys one of our products never to have to buy another. We never make an improvement that renders any previous model obsolete. The parts of a specific model are not only interchangeable with all other cars of that model, but they are interchangeable with similar parts on all the cars that we have turned out. You can take a car of ten years ago and, buying to-day's parts, make it with very little expense into a car of to-day. Having these objectives the costs always come down under pressure. And since we have the firm policy of steady price reduction, there is always pressure. Sometimes it is just harder! . . .

Now as to saturation. We are continually asked:

"When will you get to the point of overproduction? When will there be more cars than people to use them?"

We believe it is possible some day to reach the point where all goods are produced so cheaply and in such quantities that overproduction will be a reality. But as far as we are concerned, we do not look forward to that condition with fear--we look forward to it with great satisfaction. Nothing could be more splendid than a world in which everybody has all that he wants. Our fear is that this condition will be too long postponed. As to our own products, that condition is very far away. We do not know how many motor cars a family will desire to use of the particular kind that we make. We know that, as the price has come down, the farmer, who at first used one car (and it must be remembered that it is not so very long ago that the farm market for motor cars was absolutely unknown--the limit of sales was at that time fixed by all the wise statistical sharps at somewhere near the number of millionaires in the country) now often uses two, and also he buys a truck. Perhaps, instead of sending workmen out to scattered jobs in a single car, it will be cheaper to send each worker out in a car of his own. That is happening with salesmen. The public finds its own consumptive needs with unerring accuracy, and since we no longer make motor cars or tractors, but merely the parts which when assembled become motor cars and tractors, the facilities as now provided would hardly be sufficient to provide replacements for ten million cars. And it would be quite the same with any business. We do not have to bother about overproduction for some years to come, provided the prices are right. It is the refusal of people to buy on account of price that really stimulates real business. Then if we want to do business we have to get the prices down without hurting the quality. Thus price reduction forces us to learn improved and less wasteful methods of production. One big part of the discovery of what is "normal" in industry depends on managerial genius discovering better ways of doing things. If a man reduces his selling price to a point where he is making no profit or incurring a loss, then he simply is forced to discover how to make as good an article by a better method--making his new method produce the profit, and not producing a profit out of reduced wages or increased prices to the public. . . .

Henry Ford, in collaboration with Samuel Crowther, My Life and Work (New York: Doubleday and Company, 1922), passim.

Labor Policies at the Ford Motor Company (1916)
By the 1920s the automobile industry, though barely two decades old, was the nation's largest. More than one and a half million cars rolled off Ford's assembly lines in 1923, and in the Detroit area alone Ford, who had employed barely three hundred persons just two decades earlier, had some twenty-four thousand people on his payroll. Always a dedicated if eccentric idealist, Ford tried to deal with his employees in innovative ways. His boldest and most controversial stroke came in 1914, when he reduced the workday to eight hours and raised a day's pay to the then-unheard-of sum (for manufacturing workers) of five dollars. In the following article by Ford's first personnel manager, what motives are offered for this apparently benevolent, enlightened policy? Was it entirely benevolent? How would workers today greet a comparable policy?

It was along in 1912 that we began to realize something of the relative value of men, mechanism and material in the threefold phase of manufacturing, so to speak, and we confess that up to this time we had believed that mechanism and material were of the larger importance and that somehow or other the human element or our men were taken care of automatically and needed little or no consideration.

During that year there were a number of things that happened that made their impression upon the minds of the executives of the company.

I recall a drop hammer operation that had gone along for a number of years at an even output, when somehow, the standard dropped off. The hammer was in good condition, the man who had operated the machine for years was on the job, but the finished output failed to appear in the old proportions that we were looking for and had the right to expect.

A superficial analysis of things brought no light, but a little talk with the operator revealed a condition of things entirely outside of business, that was responsible for our depleted production. Sickness, indebtedness, and fear and worry over things that related entirely to the home, had crept in and had put a satisfactory human unit entirely out of harmony with the things that were necessary for production.

This is the type of incident that played an important part in the conclusions that we reached.

Our first step was to reduce our working day from ten to nine hours and to give our men an increase of about 15 per cent for nine hours over what they had received for ten.

Following this we instituted a plan for grading employes according to skill, with the idea of eliminating, as far as possible, petty discrimination, misfits, and those unsatisfactory conditions which obtain now and then, possibly through the more aggressive making their worth felt and known than men of more retiring dispositions are wont to do, or to prevent the favoritism of a foreman for an employee, overstepping the bounds of merit or consistency in any case. . . .

Moreover, we laid down a rule whereby a foreman might eliminate a man from his particular department but could not discharge him from the employ of the company. . . .

It may be startling for some of you to know that in the last six months there has been but one man discharged from the Ford organization.

. . . Suffice it to say that the good things and the substantial increases that came to the company through their efforts in the directions indicated gave rise to a further consideration of the human element which has resulted in our so-called profit sharing plan.

Now, I should like to impress upon you the fact that this profit sharing work was in no sense instituted as a spasmodic thing, was not designed or conceived for the sake of business expedient or advertising. We were perfectly satisfied with what each man was giving us, as far as daily return was concerned. We did not seek to advertise the car nor the company through this plan, but rather we felt that we owed it to our men at that time to give them all the help we consistently could to better their financial and their moral status, and to insure, as far as we could, a life worth while, and not merely a bare living.

It was established some time prior to this work that a man who comes out of a home well balanced, who has no fear for the necessities of life for those he is taking care of, who is not in constant dread of losing his position for reasons beyond his control, is the most powerful economic factor that we can use in the shape of a human being.

The profit sharing plan of the Ford Motor Company gives unto every man who can use it within limitations which I shall state, in addition to his wage, a certain amount, according to his worth and what his skill and ability merit for him, to have and to use according to his individual needs for his health and happiness in youth and in old age.

Now, over against each of the eight rates of wage we have set a profit sharing rate, and the lowest total daily income that a worker receives under the profit sharing plan is $5 a day.

This $5 a day, or 62 1/2 cents an hour, is not the lowest minimum wage of the Ford worker; 34 cents is the minimum hourly wage and 28 1/2 cents the minimum share of profits, totaling 62 1/2 cents, which makes a total daily income of $5.

There are three groups under which each employee is considered for profit sharing--these, practically, are all the rules and regulations in connection with the work.

1. All married men living with and taking good care of their families.

2. All single men, over twenty-two, of proven thrifty habits.

3. Men, under twenty-two years of age, and women, who are the sole support of some next of kin or blood relative.

It was clearly foreseen that $5 a day in the hands of some men would work a tremendous handicap along the paths of rectitude and right living and would make of them a menace to society in general and so it was established at start that no man was to receive the money who could not use it advisedly and conservatively; also, that where a man seemed to qualify under the plan and later developed weaknesses, that it was within the province of the company to take away his share of the profits until such time as he could rehabilitate himself; nor was any man urged against his own judgment, likes or dislikes, to change his mode of living and to qualify under that plan if he did not willingly so elect.

The company organized a band of thirty men who were chosen because of their peculiar fitness for the work to act as investigators. The whole work was put into effect and supervised by the employees of the company--no outside talent or assistance was asked. We have worked out the whole scheme with Ford men.

This band of thirty men was commissioned to see each individual employee and to report as to whether, in their judgment, a man was eligible for a share in the profits. These reports were in turn reviewed by a committee and each case passed upon individually.

As a result of this work our employees were grouped as follows:

First Group. Those who were firmly established in the ways of thrift and who would carry out the spirit of the plan themselves were catalogued as one group.

Second Group. Those who had never had a chance but were willing to grasp the opportunity in the way every man should, were catalogued in the second group.

Third Group. Those who had qualified but we were in doubt as to their strength of character to continue in the direction they had started in, were placed in the third group.

Fourth Group. And the men who did not or could not qualify were put into a fourth group.

The first group of men were never bothered except when we desired information for annual or semi-annual reports or something of that kind.

The second group were looked up as often as in the judgment of the investigation department, so called, we could help them or strengthen their purpose by kindly suggestion.

The third group were dealt with in much the same fashion, although some detailed plans had to be laid for them.

The fourth group were very carefully and thoroughly studied in the hope that we might bring them, with the others, to a realization of what we were trying to accomplish, and to modifications, changes and sometimes complete revamping of their lives and habits, in order that they might receive what the company wanted to give them.

During the first six months 69 per cent of our force qualified. At the end of the first year about 87 per cent were on a profit sharing basis, and at the present time about 90 per cent are receiving the benefits under this plan. . . .

The profits are paid to each employee with his wages in his pay envelope every two weeks. He is not influenced or coerced to spend his money for any one especial thing. The policy of the company is not to sell its men anything or influence them to buy anything--with the exception of Ford cars.

Our legal department has been enlarged so that men may come for counsel and suggestion as to ways and means for employing professional help.

As a part and parcel of the legal department also, we have a committee that makes appraisals of property for employees. A man who has picked out a home and gotten a price upon it, may submit the facts to our legal department, and without charge get from them an idea as to the worth of the property in connection with the price asked, also a general report as to the worth of the house, from the standpoint of construction, finishing and equipment.

We are also doing, in connection with the investigation work, something that is of great benefit both to the men and to the company.

Every morning there is turned over from the time department to our investigation staff a list of the absentees of the day previous, which is carefully looked up. If a man is in trouble he gets help; if a man has been wasting his time and himself, he is reminded of the fact quite forcibly, and is made to feel that to hold his position he must realize the necessity of cooperation.

This little scheme, which is merely eternal vigilance, has cut the number of our daily absentees from 10 per cent to less than one-half of 1 per cent, exclusive of the times when epidemics of grippe, cold, and other human ills prevail, and then it is increased by just the proportion that our men bear to the number afflicted.

It has been no easy task to add to the number of men we originally had, twenty more of the same type and caliber to act as investigators as our forces grew.

Two years ago we were employing some thirteen thousand men; today we have some twenty-four thousand, but we have gained rather than lost in the kind of men and in the spirit and energy shown, as far as this force is concerned.

At the present time we have divided the whole number so that those especially gifted in cases of domestic infelicity might tackle jobs of this type; those who have evidenced unusual skill in handling men with criminal records, are detailed to such cases, and so on.

As you probably know, of necessity rather than choice, a large part of our working force is made up of non-English-speaking men.

It was utterly impossible to reach these men with an explanation of our work through the medium of interpreters, and besides, we found a mercenary unwillingness, if you please, on the part of sophisticated fellow countrymen to aid us in helping this great army of men, which comprised 50 to 60 per cent of the entire number of Ford employees. . . .

We sought out Dr. Roberts--he came to Detroit, and there was organized the plan for giving all non-English-speaking employees a good basic knowledge of the English language through this system.

At the present time we have enrolled in our shop some 1,500, who are taught by volunteer teachers,--foremen, sub-foremen and graduates of the school, who receive in six or eight months, not a lot of grammar or mathematics, or geography, but the ground work of the English language, which enables them to read, write, speak and understand our tongue.

In our motor department there has been a gradual voluntary increase of production (the general layout and operations being practically the same as before with the same number of men), of from 6,125 motors in a 9-hour day to 7,200 in an 8-hour day.

The assembly of radiator cores, for example, has jumped so that a unit of men, previously putting together 750 in nine hours, now assemble 1,300 in eight, and a single group in the fender department heretofore making 38 fenders in nine hours are today producing 50 in eight.

In the making of gasoline tanks, 1,200 for 60 men is the output in eight hours versus 800 by 65 in nine hours.

Many of the methods and schemes used in our factory which have lately helped us so much in cutting out waste motion and lost time, are the direct results of the new spirit in the men and come to us from the rank and file of our employes.

We are finding additional capacity that is willing and always available if justly recognized and amply rewarded.

We used to hire from 40 to 60 per cent of our force each month to maintain it. In the year 1913 between 50,000 and 60,000 people passed through our employment office. In the year 1915 we employed about 7,000, of which number only 2,000 can be used in contrast with the 50,000 mentioned, because the 5,000 were for new jobs and for the enlargement of forces.

As I have previously stated, our daily absentees have decreased from 10 per cent to less than one-half of 1 per cent.

John R. Lee, "The So-Called Profit Sharing System in the Ford Plant," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 65 (May 1916): 299-305, 308.

Margaret Sanger Campaigns for Birth Control (1920)
Few other feminists could rival Margaret Sanger's energy, daring, and genius for organization and publicity. Prosecuted in 1914 for publishing a radical journal, The Woman Rebel, she fled to England, where she made the acquaintance of the noted sexual theorist, Havelock Ellis. She returned to the United States in 1915 and launched herself on a lifelong crusade for birth control. Despite being arrested several more times in subsequent years, she persevered in founding the American Birth Control League (later Planned Parenthood) in 1921. For the next decade and more, Sanger tirelessly championed her cause. What arguments does she emphasize here in favor of contraception? What was her view of women? of men? of the relation between the sexes? Critics sometimes accused her of drinking too deeply from the well of racism and nativism that seemed to overflow in the 1920s. Do the remarks that follow offer any evidence in support of such a charge?

The most far-reaching social development of modern times is the revolt of woman against sex servitude. The most important force in the remaking of the world is a free motherhood. Beside this force, the elaborate international programs of modern statesmen are weak and superficial. . . .

Only in recent years has woman's position as the gentler and weaker half of the human family been emphatically and generally questioned. Men assumed that this was woman's place; woman herself accepted it. It seldom occurred to anyone to ask whether she would go on occupying it forever. . . .

Caught in this "vicious circle," woman has, through her reproductive ability, founded and perpetuated the tyrannies of the Earth. Whether it was the tyranny of a monarchy, an oligarchy or a republic, the one indispensable factor of its existence was, as it is now, hordes of human beings--human beings so plentiful as to be cheap, and so cheap that ignorance was their natural lot. . . .

The creators of over-population are the women, who, while wringing their hands over each fresh horror, submit anew to their task of producing the multitudes who will bring about the next tragedy of civilization.

While unknowingly laying the foundations of tyrannies and providing the human tinder for racial conflagrations, woman was also unknowingly creating slums, filling asylums with insane, and institutions with other defectives. She was replenishing the ranks of the prostitutes, furnishing grist for the criminal courts and inmates for prisons. Had she planned deliberately to achieve this tragic total of human waste and misery, she could hardly have done it more effectively. . . .

It is true that, obeying the inner urge of their natures, some women revolted. They went even to the extreme of infanticide and abortion. Usually their revolts were not general enough. They fought as individuals, not as a mass. . . .

To-day, however, woman is rising in fundamental revolt. Even her efforts at mere reform are, as we shall see later, steps in that direction. Underneath each of them is the feminine urge to complete freedom. Millions of women are asserting their right to voluntary motherhood. They are determined to decide for themselves whether they shall become mothers, under what conditions and when. This is the fundamental revolt referred to. It is for woman the key to the temple of liberty.

Even as birth control is the means by which woman attains basic freedom, so it is the means by which she must and will uproot the evil she has wrought through her submission. . . .

Two chief obstacles hinder the discharge of this tremendous obligation. The first and the lesser is the legal barrier. Dark-Age laws would still deny to her the knowledge of her reproductive nature. Such knowledge is indispensable to intelligent motherhood and she must achieve it, despite absurd statutes and equally absurd moral canons.

The second and more serious barrier is her own ignorance of the extent and effect of her submission. Until she knows the evil her subjection has wrought to herself, to her progeny and to the world at large, she cannot wipe out that evil. . . .

What effect will the practice of birth control have upon woman's moral development? . . . It will break her bonds. It will free her to understand the cravings and soul needs of herself and other women. It will enable her to develop her love nature separate from and independent of her maternal nature.

It goes without saying that the woman whose children are desired and are of such number that she can not only give them adequate care but keep herself mentally and spiritually alive, as well as physically fit, can discharge her duties to her children much better than the overworked, broken and querulous mother of a large, unwanted family. . . .

To achieve this she must have a knowledge of birth control. She must also assert and maintain her right to refuse the marital embrace except when urged by her inner nature. . . .

What can we expect of offspring that are the result of "accidents"--who are brought into being undesired and in fear? What can we hope for from a morality that surrounds each physical union, for the woman, with an atmosphere of submission and shame? What can we say for a morality that leaves the husband at liberty to communicate to his wife a venereal disease?

Subversion of the sex urge to ulterior purposes has dragged it to the level of the gutter. Recognition of its true nature and purpose must lift the race to spiritual freedom. Out of our growing knowledge we are evolving new and saner ideas of life in general. Out of our increasing sex knowledge we shall evolve new ideals of sex. These ideals will spring from the innermost needs of women. They will serve these needs and express them. They will be the foundation of a moral code that will tend to make fruitful the impulse which is the source, the soul and the crowning glory of our sexual natures.

When mothers have raised the standards of sex ideals and purged the human mind of its unclean conception of sex, the fountain of the race will have been cleansed. Mothers will bring forth, in purity and in joy, a race that is morally and spiritually free. . . .

Birth control itself, often denounced as a violation of natural law, is nothing more or less than the facilitation of the process of weeding out the unfit, of preventing the birth of defectives or of those who will become defectives. So, in compliance with nature's working plan, we must permit womanhood its full development before we can expect of it efficient motherhood. If we are to make racial progress, this development of womanhood must precede motherhood in every individual woman. Then and then only can the mother cease to be an incubator and be a mother indeed. Then only can she transmit to her sons and daughters the qualities which make strong individuals and, collectively, a strong race. . . .

Margaret Sanger, Woman and the New Race (New York: Brentano's, 1920), passim.

The Lynds Discover Changes in the Middle-American Home (1929)
In 1924 the sociologists Robert S. Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd arrived in Muncie, Indiana, with a team of researchers. They spent the next eighteen months studying the pattern and texture of life in Muncie, and in 1929 they published the results of their research in Middletown: A Study in Modern American Culture. Middletown has ever since been recognized as a classic work of American scholarship, perhaps the most detailed, thoughtful portrait ever drawn of life in an American community. The Lynds described the changes in the lives of ordinary, "average" people since the 1890s. Their research revealed that the pace of change was faster among "business class" people than among the "working class." (One of the most striking changes they found was that the traditional prohibition on discussing sexual matters, including birth control, was weakening. Among the more prosperous segments of Middletown's population, most women by 1924 not only discussed birth control but practiced it. The practice was much less widespread among the poorer elements of the populace.) In the following selection about housework, what are the major differences between the lives of women in the 1890s and the 1920s? How did the lives of women in the two social classes differ? What were the effects on family life of the emergence of a high-mass-consumption economy in the 1920s?

At no point can one approach the home life of Middletown without becoming aware of the shift taking place in the traditional activities of male and female. This is especially marked in the complex of activities known as "housework," which have always been almost exclusively performed by the wife, with more or less help from her daughters. In the growing number of working class families in which the wife helps to earn the family living, the husband is beginning to share directly in housework. Even in families of the business class the manual activities of the wife in making a home are being more and more replaced by goods and services produced or performed by other agencies in return for a money price, thus throwing ever greater emphasis upon the money-getting activities of the husband. . . .

The rhythm of the day's activities varies according to whether a family is of the working or business class, most of the former starting the day at six or earlier and the latter somewhat later. . . .

Dorothy Dix catches the traditional situation in her remark, "Marriage brings a woman a life sentence of hard labor in her home. Her work is the most monotonous in the world and she has no escape from it." Many working class housewives, struggling to commute this sentence for their daughters if not for themselves, voiced in some form the wish of one mother, "I've always wanted my girls to do something other than housework; I don't want them to be house drudges like me!" And both groups are being borne along on the wave of material changes toward a somewhat lighter sentence to household servitude. Of the ninety-one working class wives who gave data on the amount of time their mothers spent on housework as compared with themselves, sixty-six (nearly three-fourths) said that their mothers spent more time, ten approximately the same, and fifteen less time. Of the thirty-seven wives of the business group interviewed who gave similar data, seventeen said that their mothers spent more time, eight about the same, and twelve less time.

The fact that the difference between the women of this business group and their mothers is less marked than that between the working class women and their mothers is traceable in part to the decrease in the amount of paid help in the homes of the business class. It is apparently about half as frequent for Middletown housewives to hire full-time servant girls to do their housework today as in 1890. The thirty-nine wives of the business group answering on this point reported almost precisely half as many full-time servants as their mothers in 1890, and this ratio is supported by Federal Census figures; thirteen of the thirty-nine have full-time servants, only two of them more than one. But if the women of the business class have fewer servants than their mothers, they are still markedly more served than the working class. One hundred and twelve out of 118 working class women had no paid help at all during the year preceding the interview, while only four of the thirty-nine women of the business group interviewed had had no help; one of the former group and twenty-five of the latter group had the equivalent of one or more days a week. Both groups of housewives have been affected by the reduction in the number of "old maid" sisters and daughters performing the same duties as domestic servants but without receiving a fixed compensation. Prominent among the factors involved in this diminution of full-time servants are the increased opportunities for women to get a living in other kinds of work; the greater cost of a "hired girl," ten to fifteen dollars a week as against three dollars in 1890; and increased attention to child-rearing, making mothers more careful about the kind of servants they employ. "Every one has the same problem today," said one thoughtful mother. "It is easy to get good girls by the hour but very difficult to get any one good to stay all the time. Then, too, the best type of girl, with whom I feel safe to leave the children, wants to eat with the family." The result is a fortification of the tendency to spend time on the children and transfer other things to service agencies outside the home. A common substitute for a full-time servant today is the woman who "comes in" one or two days a week. A single day's labor of this sort today costs approximately what the housewife's mother paid for a week's work.

Smaller houses, easier to "keep up," labor-saving devices, canned goods, baker's bread, less heavy meals, and ready-made clothing are among the places where the lack of servants is being compensated for and time saved today. Working class housewives repeatedly speak, also, of the use of running water, the shift from wood to coal fires, and the use of linoleum on floors as time-savers. Wives of the business class stress certain non-material changes as well. "I am not as particular as my mother," said many of these housewives, or "I sometimes leave my supper dishes until morning, which my mother would never have thought of doing. She used to do a much more elaborate fall and spring cleaning, which lasted a week or two. I consider time for reading and clubs and my children more important than such careful housework and I just don't do it." These women, on the other hand, mention numerous factors making their work harder than their mothers'. "The constant soot and cinders in this soft-coal city and the hard, alkaline water make up for all you save by new conveniences." A number feel that while the actual physical labor of housework is less and one is less particular about many details, rising standards in other respects use up the saved time. "People are more particular about diet today. They care more about having things nicely served and dressing for dinner. So many things our mothers didn't know about we feel that we ought to do for our children."

Most important among these various factors affecting women's work is the increased use of labor-saving devices. Just as the advent of the Owens machine in one of Middletown's largest plants has unseated a glass-blowing process that had come down largely unchanged from the days of the early Egyptians, so in the homes of Middletown certain primitive hand skills have been shifted overnight to modern machines. The oil lamp, the gas flare, the broom, the pump, the water bucket, the washboard, the flatiron, the cook stove, all only slightly modified forms of some of man's most primitive tools, dominated Middletown housework in the nineties. In 1924, as noted above, all but 1 per cent. of Middletown's houses were wired for electricity. Between March, 1920, and February, 1924, there was an average increase of 25 per cent. in the K.W.H. [kilowatt hours] of current used by each local family. How this additional current is being used may be inferred from the following record of sales of electrical appliances by five local electrical shops, a prominent drug store, and the local electric power company for the only items it sells, irons and toasters, over the six-month period from May first to October thirty-first, 1923: curlers sold, 1,173; irons, 1,114; vacuum cleaners, 709; toasters, 463; washing machines, 371; heaters, 114; heating pads, 18; electric refrigerators, 11; electric ranges, 3; electric ironers, 1. The manager of the local electric power company estimates that nearly 90 per cent. of Middletown homes have electric irons.

It is in part by compelling advertising couched in terms of certain of women's greatest values that use of these material tools is being so widely diffused:

"Isn't Bobby more important than his clothes?" demands an advertisement of the "Power Laundries" in a Middletown paper.

The advertisement of an electrical company reads:

This is the test of a successful mother--she puts first things first. She does not give to sweeping the time that belongs to her children. . . . Men are judged successful according to their power to delegate work. Similarly the wise woman delegates to electricity all that electricity can do. She cannot delegate the one task more important. Human lives are in her keeping; their future is molded by her hands and heart.

Another laundry advertisement beckons:

Time for sale! Will you buy? Where can you buy back a single yesterday? Nowhere, of course. Yet, right in your city, you can purchase tomorrows. Time for youth and beauty! Time for club work, for church and community activities. Time for books and plays and concerts. Time for home and children. . . .

Excerpt from Middletown: A Study in American Culture by Robert S. Lynd and Helen M. Lynd, 1929 by Harcourt Brace & Company and renewed 1957 by Robert S. and Helen M. Lynd,.

The Supreme Court Declares That Women Are Different from Men (1908)
When a Portland, Oregon, laundry violated an Oregon statute limiting the number of hours that women could work in a day, the laundry owner was convicted and fined ten dollars. The owner, Curt Muller, appealed his conviction all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which affirmed his guilt in the case of Muller v. Oregon in 1908. On what grounds did the Court rest its decision? Could feminists in the early twentieth century support the Court's reasoning in this case?

On February 19, 1903, the legislature of the State of Oregon passed an act (Session Laws, 1903, p. 148), the first section of which is in these words:

"Sec. 1. That no female (shall) be employed in any mechanical establishment, or factory, or laundry in this State more than ten hours during any one day. The hours of work may be so arranged as to permit the employment of females at any time so that they shall not work more than ten hours during the twenty-four hours of any one day."

Section 3 made a violation of the provisions of the prior sections a misdemeanor, subject to a fine of not less than $10 nor more than $25. On September 18, 1905, an information was filed in the Circuit Court of the State for the county of Multnomah, charging that the defendant "on the 4th day of September, A.D. 1905, in the county of Multnomah and State of Oregon, then and there being the owner of a laundry, known as the Grand Laundry, in the city of Portland, and the employer of females therein, did then and there unlawfully permit and suffer one Joe Haselbock, he, the said Joe Haselbock, then and there being an overseer, superintendent and agent of said Curt Muller, in the said Grand Laundry, to require a female, to wit, one Mrs. E. Gotcher, to work more than ten hours in said laundry on said 4th day of September, A.D. 1905, contrary to the statutes in such cases made and provided, and against the peace and dignity of the State of Oregon."

A trial resulted in a verdict against the defendant, who was sentenced to pay a fine of $10. The Supreme Court of the State affirmed the conviction, State v. Muller, 48 Oregon, 252, whereupon the case was brought here on writ of error.

The single question is the constitutionality of the statute under which the defendant was convicted so far as it affects the work of a female in a laundry. . . .

That woman's physical structure and the performance of maternal functions place her at a disadvantage in the struggle for subsistence is obvious. This is especially true when the burdens of motherhood are upon her. Even when they are not, by abundant testimony of the medical fraternity continuance for a long time on her feet at work, repeating this from day to day, tends to injurious effects upon the body, and as healthy mothers are essential to vigorous offspring, the physical well-being of woman becomes an object of public interest and care in order to preserve the strength and vigor of the race.

Still again, history discloses the fact that woman has always been dependent upon man. He established his control at the outset by superior physical strength, and this control in various forms, with diminishing intensity, has continued to the present. As minors, though not to the same extent, she has been looked upon in the courts as needing especial care that her rights may be preserved. Education was long denied her, and while now the doors of the school room are opened and her opportunities for acquiring knowledge are great, yet even with that and the consequent increase of capacity for business affairs it is still true that in the struggle for subsistence she is not an equal competitor with her brother. Though limitations upon personal and contractual rights may be removed by legislation, there is that in her disposition and habits of life which will operate against a full assertion of those rights. She will still be where some legislation to protect her seems necessary to secure a real equality of right. Doubtless there are individual exceptions, and there are many respects in which she has an advantage over him; but looking at it from the viewpoint of the effort to maintain an independent position in life, she is not upon an equality. Differentiated by these matters from the other sex, she is properly placed in a class by herself, and legislation designed for her protection may be sustained, even when like legislation is not necessary for men and could not be sustained. It is impossible to close one's eyes to the fact that she still looks to her brother and depends upon him. Even though all restrictions on political, personal and contractual rights were taken away, and she stood, so far as statutes are concerned, upon an absolutely equal plane with him, it would still be true that she is so constituted that she will rest upon and look to him for protection; that her physical structure and a proper discharge of her maternal functions--having in view not merely her own health, but the well-being of the race--justify legislation to protect her from the greed as well as the passion of man. The limitations which this statute places upon her contractual powers, upon her right to agree with her employer as to the time she shall labor, are not imposed solely for her benefit, but also largely for the benefit of all. Many words cannot make this plainer. The two sexes differ in structure of body, in the functions to be performed by each, in the amount of physical strength, in the capacity for long-continued labor, particularly when done standing, the influence of vigorous health upon the future well-being of the race, the self-reliance which enables one to assert full rights, and in the capacity to maintain the struggle for subsistence. This difference justifies a difference in legislation and upholds that which is designed to compensate for some of the burdens which rest upon her. . . .

For these reasons, . . . we are of the opinion that it cannot be adjudged that the act in question is in conflict with the Federal Constitution, so far as it respects the work of a female in a laundry, and the judgment of the Supreme Court of Oregon is

Affirmed.

Muller v. Oregon (208 U.S. 412), pp. 416-423.

The Supreme Court Declares That Men and Women Are Equal (1923)
Fifteen years after the Muller case--and three years after passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, which enfranchised women--the Supreme Court reversed its ruling in Muller and declared in the case of Adkins v. Children's Hospital that sexual inequalities were rapidly disappearing. The case involved a federal statute regulating women's wages in Washington, D.C. Justice George Sutherland, speaking for the Court majority, invalidated the regulation in the following decision. How does his reasoning differ from that of the Court majority in the Muller case? Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. dissented from Sutherland's opinion, declaring that it would take more than the Nineteenth Amendment to convince him that there were no differences between men and women. Does Sutherland's or Holmes's position provide the superior foundation for legislation regarding women? Why might feminists have disagreed over the Adkins case?

The question presented for determination by these appeals is the constitutionality of the Act of September 19, 1918, providing for the fixing of minimum wages for women and children in the District of Columbia. . . .

In the Muller Case the validity of an Oregon statute, forbidding the employment of any female in certain industries more than ten hours during any one day was upheld. The decision proceeded upon the theory that the difference between the sexes may justify a different rule respecting hours of labor in the case of women than in the case of men. It is pointed out that these consist in differences of physical structure, especially in respect of the maternal functions, and also in the fact that historically woman has always been dependent upon man, who has established his control by superior physical strength. . . . But the ancient inequality of the sexes, otherwise than physical, as suggested in the Muller Case has continued "with diminishing intensity." In view of the great--not to say revolutionary--changes which have taken place since that utterance, in the contractual, political and civil status of women, culminating in the Nineteenth Amendment, it is not unreasonable to say that these differences have now come almost, if not quite, to the vanishing point. In this aspect of the matter, while the physical differences must be recognized in appropriate cases, and legislation fixing hours or conditions of work may properly take them into account, we cannot accept the doctrine that women of mature age, sui juris, require or may be subjected to restrictions upon their liberty of contract which could not lawfully be imposed in the case of men under similar circumstances. To do so would be to ignore all the implications to be drawn from the present day trend of legislation, as well as that of common thought and usage, by which woman is accorded emancipation from the old doctrine that she must be given special protection or be subjected to special restraint in her contractual and civil relationships. In passing, it may be noted that the instant statute applies in the case of a woman employer contracting with a woman employee as it does when the former is a man. . . .

Adkins v. Children's Hospital (261 U.S. 525), pp. 539-562.