A wave of political reform, known as the progressive movement, washed over the United States as the new century opened. Progressivism was inspired by muckraking journalists, who exposed corruption, the adulteration of food and drugs, and the exploitation of labor; by socialists, who called attention to the growing class divisions in the industrial United States; by ministers of the gospel alarmed at the grinding poverty in which many Americans lived; and by feminists who clamored for fair treatment for families, women, and children. Theodore Roosevelt embraced many of the tenets of progressivism when he became president in 1901. He fought to tame the big corporations and to protect consumers from dangerous products. Among his major achievements as a reformer was the invigoration of the campaign to conserve the nation's fast-disappearing natural resources, especially the forests. Other progressives championed the cause of women's suffrage, still a subject of hot controversy. When Roosevelt's handpicked successor, William Howard Taft, appeared to betray many of the principles of progressivism, Roosevelt determined to challenge him for the Republican presidential nomination in 1912.

Exposing the Meat Packers (1906)
In 1906 Upton Sinclair, the youthful and prolific socialist writer, published his novel The Jungle, a damning exposure of conditions in the Chicago meat-packing plants. Seeking to turn people to socialism, he succeeded in turning their stomachs. The uproar that followed publication of his novel caused President Roosevelt to initiate an official investigation, and the following sober report was hardly less shocking than The Jungle. It confirmed the essential truth of Sinclair's exposé, except for such lurid scenes as men falling into vats and emerging as lard. Which aspects of this official investigation revealed conditions most detrimental to the public health?

. . . Meat scraps were also found being shoveled into receptacles from dirty floors, where they were left to lie until again shoveled into barrels or into machines for chopping. These floors, it must be noted, were in most cases damp and soggy, in dark, ill-ventilated rooms, and te employees in utter ignorance of cleanliness or danger to health expectorated at will upon them. In a word, we saw meat shoveled from filthy wooden floors, piled on tables rarely washed, pushed from room to room in rotten box carts, in all of which processes it was in the way of gathering dirt, splinters, floor filth, and the expectoration of tuberculous and other diseased workers.

Where comment was made to floor superintendents about these matters, it was always the reply that this meat would afterwards be cooked, and that this sterilization would prevent any danger from its use. Even this, it may be pointed out in passing, is not wholly true. A very considerable portion of the meat so handled is sent out as smoked products and in the form of sausages, which are prepared to be eaten without being cooked. . . .

As an extreme example of the entire disregard on the part of employees of any notion of cleanliness in handling dressed meat, we saw a hog that had just been killed, cleaned, washed, and started on its way to the cooling room fall from the sliding rail to a dirty wooden floor and slide part way into a filthy men's privy. It was picked up by two employees, placed upon a truck, carried into the cooling room and hung up with other carcasses, no effort being made to clean it. . . .

In one well-known establishment we came upon fresh meat being shoveled into barrels, and a regular proportion being added of stale scraps that had lain on a dirty floor in the corner of a room for some days previous. In another establishment, equally well known, a long table was noted covered with several hundred pounds of cooked scraps of beef and other meats. Some of these meat scraps were dry, leathery, and unfit to be eaten; and in the heap were found pieces of pigskin, and even some bits of rope strands and other rubbish. Inquiry evoked the frank admission from the man in charge that this was to be ground up and used in making "potted ham."

All of these canned products bear labels, of which the following is a sample:

ABATTOIR NO.-- THE CONTENTS OF THIS PACKAGE HAVE BEEN INSPECTED ACCORDING TO THE ACT OF CONGRESS OF MARCH 3, 1891.

[The agitation and investigation inspired by Sinclair's The Jungle had much to do with bringing about the passage by Congress of the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906.]

Congressional Record, 59th Cong., 1st sess. (June 4, 1906), p. 7801.

Theodore Roosevelt Roasts Muckrakers (1906)
President Roosevelt, though recognizing some unpalatable truths in Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, was critical. He wrote the author bluntly that Sinclair had said things that should not have been written unless backed up "with testimony that would satisfy an honest man of reasonable intelligence." Privately he declared that Sinclair had reflected unfairly on both honest and dishonest capitalism in Chicago. Finally, nauseated by excessive sensationalism, Roosevelt made the following famous attack (which gave rise to the term muckraker) in a Washington speech. What are the strengths and weaknesses of his argument that hysterical and indiscriminate muckraking was doing more harm than good?

In Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress you may recall the description of the Man with the Muck-rake [manure rake], the man who could look no way but downward, with the muck-rake in his hand; who was offered a celestial crown for his muck-rake, but who would neither look up nor regard the crown he was offered, but continued to rake himself the filth of the floor.

In Pilgrim's Progress the Man with the Muck-rake is set forth as the example of him whose vision is fixed on carnal instead of on spiritual things. Yet he also typifies the man who in this life consistently refuses to see aught that is lofty, and fixes his eyes with solemn intentness only on that which is vile and debasing.

Now it is very necessary that we should not flinch from seeing what is vile and debasing. There is filth on the floor, and it must be scraped up with the muck-rake: and there are times and places where this service is the most needed of all the services that can be performed. But the man who never does anything else, who never thinks or speaks or writes save of his feats with the muck-rake, speedily becomes, not a help to society, not an incitement to good, but one of the most potent forces for evil.

There are--in the body politic, economic, and social--many and grave evils, and there is urgent necessity for the sternest war upon them. There should be relentless exposure of and attack upon every evil man, whether politician or businessman; every evil practice, whether in politics, in business, or in social life. I hail as a benefactor every writer or speaker, every man who, on the platform, or in book, magazine, or newspaper, with merciless severity makes such attack, provided always that he in his turn remembers that the attack is of use only if it is absolutely truthful. The liar is no whit better than the thief, and if his mendacity takes the form of slander, he may be worse than most thieves. It puts a premium upon knavery untruthfully to attack an honest man, or even with hysterical exaggeration to assail a bad man with untruth. An epidemic of indiscriminate assault upon character does no good, but very great harm. The soul of every scoundrel is gladdened whenever an honest man is assailed, or even when a scoundrel is untruthfully assailed.

Now, it is easy to twist out of shape what I have just said. . . . Some persons are sincerely incapable of understanding that to denounce mudslinging does not mean the endorsement of whitewashing, and both the interested individuals who need whitewashing and those others who practice mudslinging like to encourage such confusion of ideas. One of the chief counts against those who make indiscriminate assault upon men in business or men in public life is that they invite a reaction which is sure to tell powerfully in favor of the unscrupulous scoundrel who really ought to be attacked, who ought to be exposed, who ought, if possible, to be put in the penitentiary. If Aristides is praised overmuch as just, people get tired of hearing it;* and overcensure of the unjust finally and from similar reasons results in their favor.

Any excess is almost sure to invite a reaction; and, unfortunately, the reaction, instead of taking the form of punishment of those guilty of the excess, is very apt to take the form either of punishment of the unoffending or of giving immunity, and even strength, to offenders. The effort to make financial or political profit out of the destruction of character can only result in public calamity. Gross and reckless assaults on character, whether on the stump or in newspaper, magazine, or book, create a morbid and vicious public sentiment, and at the same time act as a profound deterrent to able men of normal sensitiveness and tend to prevent them from entering the public service at any price.

[Roosevelt thus threw muck at the muckrakers. They resented his attack, claiming that even if they exaggerated, they were exposing evil conditions and promoting desirable legislation. (At the same time, they made money selling their magazine articles and books.) But Roosevelt was unconvinced. In 1911 he went so far as to write privately: "I think the muckrakers stand on a level of infamy with the corruptionists in politics. After all, there is no great difference between violation of the eighth [no stealing] and the ninth [no lying] commandments; and to sell one's vote for money is morally, I believe, hardly as reprehensible as to practice slanderous mendacity for hire" (Roosevelt Letters, vol. 7, p. 447). The truth is that he continued with intemperate muckraking himself, attacking "malefactors of great wealth," "nature fakers," and others. "You're the chief muckraker," Speaker Joseph G. Cannon told him flatly in 1906.]

*An allusion to Plutarch's story of the Athenian who voted for the banishment of Aristides (called "The Just") because he was tired of hearing everyone call him just.

Theodore Roosevelt, "The Man with the Muck-Rake," Putnam's Monthly and the Critic 1 (October 1906): 42-43.

Lincoln Steffens Bares Philadelphia Bossism (1904)
A California-born journalist, (Joseph) Lincoln Steffens, after serving as a "gentleman reporter" in New York, emerged as one of the first and most influential of the reforming muckrakers. Associated with McClure's Magazine, the leading muckraking journal, he published a sensational series of articles on municipal graft, later collected in book form as The Shame of the Cities (1904). After the muckraking craze ended, Steffens became disillusioned, visited Russia, interviewed Lenin, and developed a warm admiration for the Soviet Union. In his famous exposé about conditions in Philadelphia, what is most ironic? What is most shocking? Who was responsible for the existence and continuation of these irregularities?

Other American cities, no matter how bad their own condition may be, all point with scorn to Philadelphia as worse--"the worst-governed city in the country." St. Louis, Minneapolis, Pittsburgh submit with some patience to the jibes of any other community; the most friendly suggestion from Philadelphia is rejected with contempt. The Philadelphians are "supine," "asleep"; hopelessly ring-ruled, they are "complacent." "Politically benighted," Philadelphia is supposed to have no light to throw upon a state of things that is almost universal.

This is not fair. Philadelphia is, indeed, corrupt; but it is not without significance. Every city and town in the country can learn something from the typical political experience of this great representative city. New York is excused for many of its ills because it is the metropolis; Chicago, because of its forced development; Philadelphia is our "third largest" city and its growth has been gradual and natural.

Immigration has been blamed for our municipal conditions. Philadelphia, with 47 percent of its population native-born of native-born parents, is the most American of our greater cities.

It is "good," too, and intelligent. I don't know just how to measure the intelligence of a community, but a Pennsylvania college professor who declared to me his belief in education for the masses as a way out of political corruption, himself justified the "rake-off" of preferred contractors on public works on the ground of a "fair business profit."

Another plea we [Americans] have made is that we are too busy to attend to public business, and we have promised, when we come to wealth and leisure, to do better. Philadelphia has long enjoyed great and widely distributed prosperity. It is the city of homes. There is a dwelling house for every five persons--men, women, and children--of the population; and the people give one a sense of more leisure and repose than any community I ever dwelt in. Some Philadelphians account for their political state on the ground of their ease and comfort. . . .

Then we hear that we are a young people and that when we are older and "have traditions," like some of the old countries, we also will be honest. Philadelphia is one of the oldest of our cities and treasures for us scenes and relics of some of the noblest traditions of "our fair land." Yet I was told once, "for a joke," a party of boodlers [grafters] counted out the "divvy" [division] of their graft in unison with the ancient chime of Independence Hall. . . .

Philadelphia is proud; good people there defend corruption and boast of their machine. My college professor, with his philosophic view of "rake-offs," is one Philadelphia type. Another is the man who, driven to bay with his local pride, says: "At least you must admit that our machine is the best you have ever seen." . . .

Disgraceful? Other cities say so. But I say that if Philadelphia is a disgrace, it is a disgrace not to itself alone, nor to Pennsylvania, but to the United States and to American character. For this great city, so highly representative in other respects, is not behind in political experience, but ahead, with New York.

Philadelphia is a city that has had its reforms. . . . The present condition of Philadelphia, therefore, is not that which precedes, but that which follows reform, and in this distinction lies its startling general significance. What has happened . . . in Philadelphia may happen in any American city "after the reform is over."

For reform with us is usually revolt, not government, and is soon over. Our people do not seek, they avoid self-rule, and "reforms" are spasmodic efforts to punish bad rulers and get somebody that will give us good government or something that will make it. A self-acting form of government is an ancient superstition. We are an inventive people, and we all think that we shall devise some day a legal machine that will turn out good government automatically. The Philadelphians have treasured this belief longer than the rest of us and have tried it more often. . . .

The Philadelphia machine isn't the best. It isn't sound, and I doubt if it would stand in New York or Chicago. The enduring strength of the typical American political machine is that it is a natural growth--a sucker, but deep-rooted in the people. The New Yorkers vote for Tammany Hall. The Philadelphians do not vote; they are disfranchised, and their disfranchisement is one anchor of the foundation of the Philadelphia organization.

This is no figure of speech. The honest citizens of Philadelphia have no more rights at the polls than the Negroes down South. Nor do they fight very hard for this basic privilege. You can arouse their Republican ire by talking about the black Republican votes lost in the Southern states by white Democratic intimidation, but if you remind the average Philadelphian that he is in the same position, he will look startled, then say, "That's so, that's literally true, only I never thought of it in just that way." And it is literally true.

The machine controls the whole process of voting, and practices fraud at every stage. The [tax] assessor's list is the voting list, and the assessor is the machine's man. . . . The assessor pads the list with the names of dead dogs, children, and non-existent persons. One newspaper printed the picture of a dog, another that of a little four-year-old Negro boy, down on such a list. A "ring" orator, in a speech resenting sneers at his ward as "low down," reminded his hearers that that was the ward of Independence Hall, and, naming over the signers of the Declaration of Independence, he closed his highest flight of eloquence with the statement that "these men, the fathers of American liberty, voted down here once. And," he added with a catching grin, 'they vote here yet."

Rudolph Blankenburg, a persistent fighter for the right and the use of the right to vote (and, by the way, an immigrant), sent out just before one election a registered letter to each voter on the rolls of a certain selected division. Sixty-three percent were returned marked "not at," "removed," "deceased," etc. . . .

The repeating [voting more than once] is done boldly, for the machine controls the election officers, often choosing them from among the fraudulent names; and when no one appears to serve, assigning the heeler [political hanger-on] ready for the expected vacancy. The police are forbidden by law to stand within thirty feet of the polls, but they are at the [ballot] box and they are there to see that the machine's orders are obeyed and that repeaters whom they help to furnish are permitted to vote without "intimidation" on the names they, the police, have supplied. . . .

The business proceeds with very few hitches; there is more jesting than fighting. Violence in the past has had its effect; and is not often necessary nowadays, but if it is needed the police are there to apply it. Several citizens told me that they had seen the police help to beat citizens or election officers who were trying to do their duty, then arrest the victim. . . .

Lincoln Steffens, The Shame of the Cities (New York: McClure, Phillips & Co., 1904), pp. 193-201, passim.

George Washington Plunkitt Defends "Honest Graft" (1905)
Tammany Hall was the powerful and corrupt Democratic political machine that dominated New York City politics for many years. One of its cleverest officials, who became a millionaire through "honest graft," was George Washington (!) Plunkitt. According to his account, as here recorded by a newspaper reporter, he was above such dirty work as "shaking down" houses of prostitution ("disorderly houses"). Is his distinction between two kinds of graft legitimate? How did Tammany Hall sustain its power? Did it provide any valuable service?

Everybody is talkin' these days about Tammany men growin' rich on graft, but nobody thinks of drawin' the distinction between honest graft and dishonest graft. There's all the difference in the world between the two. Yes, many of our men have grown rich in politics. I have myself. I've made a big fortune out of the game, and I'm gettin' richer every day, but I've not gone in for dishonest graft--blackmailin' gamblers, saloon-keepers, disorderly people, etc.--and neither has any of the men who have made big fortunes in politics.

There's an honest graft, and I'm an example of how it works. I might sum up the whole thing by sayin': "I seen my opportunities and I took 'em."

Just let me explain by examples. My party's in power in the city, and it's goin' to undertake a lot of public improvements. Well, I'm tipped off, say, that they're goin' to lay out a new park at a certain place.

I see my opportunity and I take it. I go to that place and I buy up all the land I can in the neighborhood. Then the board of this or that makes its plan public, and there is a rush to get my land, which nobody cared particular for before.

Ain't it perfectly honest to charge a good price and make a profit on my investment and foresight? Of course it is. Well, that's honest graft.

Or, supposin' it's a new bridge they're goin' to build. I get tipped off and I buy as much property as I can that has to be taken for approaches. I sell at my own price later on and drop some more money in the bank.

Wouldn't you? It's just like lookin' ahead in Wall Street or in the coffee or cotton market. It's honest graft, and I'm lookin' for it every day in the year. I will tell you frankly that I've got a good lot of it, too.

I'll tell you of one case. They were goin' to fix up a big park, no matter where. I got on to it, and went lookin' about for land in that neighborhood.

I could get nothin' at a bargain but a big piece of swamp, but I took it fast enough and held on to it. What turned out was just what I counted on. They couldn't make the park complete without Plunkitt's swamp, and they had to pay a good price for it. Anything dishonest in that?

Up in the watershed I made some money, too. I bought up several bits of land there some years ago and made a pretty good guess that they would be bought up for water purposes later by the city.

Somehow, I always guessed about right, and shouldn't I enjoy the profit of my foresight? It was rather amusin' when the condemnation commissioners came along and found piece after piece of the land in the name of George Plunkitt of the Fifteenth Assembly District, New York City. They wondered how I knew just what to buy. The answer is--I seen my opportunity and I took it. I haven't confined myself to land; anything that pays is in my line. . . .

I've told you how I got rich by honest graft. Now, let me tell you that most politicians who are accused of robbin' the city get rich the same way.

They didn't steal a dollar from the city treasury. They just seen their opportunities and took them. That is why, when a reform administration comes in and spends a half million dollars in tryin' to find the public robberies they talked about in the campaign, they don't find them.

The books are always all right. The money in the city treasury is all right. Everything is all right. All they can show is that the Tammany heads of departments looked after their friends, within the law, and gave them what opportunities they could to make honest graft. Now, let me tell you that's never goin' to hurt Tammany with the people. Ever good man looks after his friends, and any man who doesn't isn't likely to be popular. If I have a good thing to hand out in private life, I give it to a friend. Why shouldn't I do the same in public life? . . .

Tammany was beat in 1901 because the people were deceived into believin' that it worked dishonest graft. They didn't draw a distinction between dishonest and honest graft, but they saw that some Tammany men grew rich, and supposed they had been robbin' the city treasury or levyin' blackmail on disorderly houses, or workin' in with the gamblers and lawbreakers.

As a matter of policy, if nothing else, why should the Tammany leaders go into such dirty business when there is so much honest graft lyin' around when they are in power? Did you ever consider that?

Now, in conclusion, I want to say that I don't own a dishonest dollar. If my worst enemy was given the job of writin' my epitaph when I'm gone, he couldn't do more than write.

"George W. Plunkitt.

He Seen His Opportunities and He Took 'Em."

William L. Riordan, Plunkitt of Tammany Hall (1948 ed.), pp. 3-8.

George Baer's Divine Right of Plutocrats (1902)
The anthracite coal miners of Pennsylvania, who were frightfully exploited and accident cursed, struck for higher wages in 1902. About 140,000 men were idled, and the chilled East was threatened with paralysis. George F. Baer, the multimillionaire spokesman for the owners, refused to permit intervention, arbitration, or even negotiation. He believed that mining was a "business," not a "religious, sentimental, or academic proposition." In response to a complaining letter from a Mr. W. F. Clark, he sent the following reply. What is the social philosophy of big business as here revealed?

17th July 1902

My dear Mr. Clark:--

I have your letter of the 16th instant.

I do not know who you are. I see that you are a religious man; but you are evidently biased in favor of the right of the working man to control a business in which he has no other interest than to secure fair wages for the work he does.

I beg of you not to be discouraged. The rights and interests of the laboring man will be protected and cared for--not by the labor agitators, but by the Christian men to whom God in His infinite wisdom has given the control of the property interests of the country, and upon the successful management of which so much depends.

Do not be discouraged. Pray earnestly that right may triumph, always remembering that the Lord God Omnipotent still reigns, and that His reign is one of law and order, and not of violence and crime.

Yours truly,

Geo. F. Baer

President

[When the Baer letter was published, the press assailed its "arrant hypocrisy," "egregious vanity," and "ghastly blasphemy." President Roosevelt nevertheless finally brought the disputants together late in 1902. Although he admittedly lost his temper and did not behave "like a gentleman," he had a large hand in working out the resulting compromise wage increase.]

Literary Digest 25 (August 30, 1902): 258. A photostatic copy of the letter is in Caro Lloyd, Henry Demarest Lloyd (New York: Funk & Wagnalls Company, 1912), vol. 2, p. 190.

Child Labor in the Coal Mines (1906)
The arrogant attitude of the coal operators seems even less excusable in the light of John Spargo's book The Bitter Cry of the Children--another significant contribution to the "muckraking" movement. An English-born socialist, Spargo had come to America in 1901 at the age of twenty-five. He was especially stirred by the rickety children of the New York tenement districts. Their mothers had no time to prepare proper meals; needlework labor in the sweatshops ran from twelve to twenty hours a day, at a wage ranging from ten cents to a cent and a half an hour. In Spargo's description of work in the coal mines, what were the various kinds of hazards involved?

Work in the coal breakers is exceedingly hard and dangerous. Crouched over the chutes, the boys sit hour after hour, picking out the pieces of slate and other refuse from the coal as it rushes past to the washers. From the cramped position they have to assume, most of them become more or less deformed and bent-backed like old men. When a boy has been working for some time and begins to get round-shouldered, his fellows say that "He's got his boy to carry round whenever he goes."

The coal is hard, and accidents to the hands, such as cut, broken, or crushed fingers, are common among the boys. Sometimes there is a worse accident: a terrified shriek is heard, and a boy is mangled and torn in the machinery, or disappears in the chute to be picked out later smothered and dead. Clouds of dust fill the breakers and are inhaled by the boys, laying the foundations for asthma and miners' consumption.

I once stood in a breaker for half an hour and tried to do the work a twelve-year-old boy was doing day after day, for ten hours at a stretch, for sixty cents a day. The gloom of the breaker appalled me. Outside the sun shone brightly, the air was pellucid, and the birds sang in chorus with the trees and the rivers. Within the breaker there was blackness, clouds of deadly dust enfolded everything, the harsh, grinding roar of the machinery and the ceaseless rushing of coal through the chutes filled the ears. I tried to pick out the pieces of slate from the hurrying stream of coal, often missing them; my hands were bruised and cut in a few minutes; I was covered from head to foot with coal dust, and for many hours afterwards I was expectorating some of the small particles of anthracite I had swallowed.

I could not do that work and live, but there were boys of ten and twelve years of age doing it for fifty and sixty cents a day. Some of them had never been inside of a school; few of them could read a child's primer. True, some of them attended the night schools, but after working ten hours in the breaker the educational results from attending school were practically nil. "We goes fer a good time, an' we keeps de guys wot's dere hoppin' all de time," said little Owen Jones, whose work I had been trying to do. . . .

As I stood in that breaker I thought of the reply of the small boy to Robert Owen [British social reformer]. Visiting an English coal mine one day, Owen asked a twelve-year-old lad if he knew God. The boy stared vacantly at his questioner: "God?" he said, "God? No, I don't. He must work in some other mine." It was hard to realize amid the danger and din and blackness of that Pennsylvania breaker that such a thing as belief in a great All-good God existed.

From the breakers the boys graduate to the mine depths, where they become door tenders, switch boys, or mule drivers. Here, far below the surface, work is still more dangerous. At fourteen or fifteen the boys assume the same risks as the men, and are surrounded by the same perils. Nor is it in Pennsylvania only that these conditions exist. In the bituminous mines of West Virginia, boys of nine or ten are frequently employed. I met one little fellow ten years old in Mt. Carbon, W. Va., last year, who was employed as a "trap boy." Think of what it means to be a trap boy at ten years of age. It means to sit alone in a dark mine passage hour after hour, with no human soul near; to see no living creature except the mules as they pass with their loads, or a rat or two seeking to share one's meal; to stand in water or mud that covers the ankles, chilled to the marrow by the cold draughts that rush in when you open the trap door for the mules to pass through; to work for fourteen hours--waiting--opening and shutting a door--then waiting again--for sixty cents; to reach the surface when all is wrapped in the mantle of night, and to fall to the earth exhuasted and have to be carried away to the nearest "shack" to be revived before it is possible to walk to the farther shack called "home."

Boys twelve years of age may be legally employed in the mines of West Virginia, by day or by night, and for as many hours as the employers care to make them toil or their bodies will stand the strain. Where the disregard of child life is such that this may be done openly and with legal sanction, it is easy to believe what miners have again and again told me--that there are hundreds of little boys of nine and ten years of age employed in the coal mines of this state.

John Spargo, The Bitter Cry of the Children (New York: Macmillan, 1906), pp. 163-165.

Sweatshop Hours for Bakers (1905)
The abuse of labor in dangerous or unhealthful occupations prompted an increasing number of state legislatures, exercising so-called police powers, to pass regulatory laws. In 1898 the Supreme Court upheld a Utah statute prohibiting miners from working more than eight hours a day, except in emergencies. In 1905, however, the Court, by a five-to-four decision in the case of Lochner v. New York, overthrew a state law forbidding bakers to work more than ten hours a day. The majority held that the right of both employers and employees to make labor contracts was protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. How might one describe the social conscience of the majority of the Supreme Court in the light of this memorable decision written by Mr. Justice Peckham?

The question whether this act is valid as a labor law, pure and simple, may be dismissed in a few words. There is no reasonable ground for interfering with the liberty of person or the right of free contract, by determining the hours of labor, in the occupation of a baker. There is no contention that bakers as a class are not equal in intelligence and capacity to men in other trades or manual occupations, or that they are not able to assert their rights and care for themselves without the protecting arm of the state interfering with their independence of judgment and of action. They are in no sense wards of the state.

Viewed in the light of a purely labor law, with no reference whatever to the question of health, we think that a law like the one before us involves neither the safety, the morals, nor the welfare of the public, and that the interest of the public is not in the slightest degree affected by such an act. The law must be upheld, if at all, as a law pertaining to the health of the individual engaged in the occupation of a baker. It does not affect any other portion of the public than those who are engaged in that occupation. Clean and wholesome bread does not depend upon whether the baker works but ten hours per day or only sixty hours a week. The limitation of the hours of labor does not come within the police power on that ground. . . .

We think that there can be no fair doubt that the trade of a baker, in and of itself, is not an unhealthy one to that degree which would authorize the legislature to interfere with the right to labor, and with the right of free contract on the part of the individual, either as employer or employee.

In looking through statistics regarding all trades and occupations, it may be true that the trade of baker does not appear to be as healthy as some other trades, and is also vastly more healthy than still others. To the common understanding the trade of a baker has never been regarded as an unhealthy one. Very likely physicians would not recommend the exercise of that or of any other trade as a remedy for ill health. Some occupations are more healthy than others, but we think there are none which might not come under the power of the legislature to supervise and control the hours of working therein, if the mere fact that the occupation is not absolutely and perfectly healthy is to confer that right upon the legislative department of the government. . . .

. . . We do not believe in the soundness of the views which uphold this law. On the contrary, we think that such a law as this, although passed in the assumed exercise of the police power, and as relating to the public health, or the health of the employees named, is not within that power, and is invalid. The act is not, within any fair meaning of the term, a health law, but is an illegal interference with the rights of individuals, both employers and employees, to make contracts regarding labor upon such terms as they may think best, or which they may agree upon with the other parties to such contracts.

Statutes of the nature of that under review, limiting the hours in which grown and intelligent men may labor to earn their living, are mere meddlesome interferences with the rights of the individual, and they are not saved from condemnation by the claim that they are passed in the exercise of the police power and upon the subject of the health of the individual whose rights are interfered with, unless there be some fair ground, reasonable in and of itself, to say that there is material danger to the public health, or to the health of the employees, if the hours of labor are not curtailed.

[Mr. Justice Holmes, the great dissenter, filed a famous protest in the bakers' case. He argued that a majority of the people of New York State evidently wanted the law and that the Court ought not to impose its own social philosophy. "The Fourteenth Amendment," he solemnly declared, referring to a famous work by an arch-conservative British social theorist, "does not enact Mr. Herbert Spencer's Social Statics." As for the right to work more than ten hours, Mayor Gaynor of New York remarked, "There were no journeymen bakers that I know of clamoring for any such liberty." Possibly chastened by Holmes's vigorous views, the Court relented and in 1908 unanimously approved an Oregon statute prohibiting the employment of women in factories and other establishments more than ten hours in one day. In 1917 the Court upheld an Oregon ten-hour law for both men and women.]

198 U.S. Reports 57, 59, 61.

Unhealthful Work for Women (1912)
In 1912 the New York State Factory Investigating Commission published a preliminary report on working conditions in the state. Among the cases documented was that of "Case No. 45, Sadie G." What does the commission's description of this woman's plight suggest about the relative power of employers and employees? Did the events that befell Sadie justify government legislation to protect female workers? What other remedies might have been proposed?

Sadie is an intelligent, neat, clean girl, who has worked from the time she got her working papers in embroidery factories. She was a stamper and for several years before she was poisoned, earned $10 a week. In her work she was accustomed to use a white powder (chalk or talcum was usual) which was brushed over the perforated designs and thus transferred to the cloth. The design was easily brushed off when made of chalk or of talcum, if the embroiderers were not careful. Her last employer therefore commenced using white lead powder, mixed with rosin, which cheapened the work as the powder could not be rubbed off and necessitate restamping.

None of the girls knew of the change in powder, nor of the danger in its use. The workroom was crowded and hot, the stampers' tables were farthest from the windows and the constant use of the powder caused them to breathe it continually and their hands were always covered with it.

Sadie had been a very strong, healthy girl, good appetite and color; she began to be unable to eat, had terrible colic, but continued to go to work in spite of the fact that she felt miserable. Her hands and feet swelled, she lost the use of one hand, her teeth and gums were blue. When she finally had to stop work, after being treated for months, for stomach trouble, her physician advised her to go to a hospital. There the examination revealed the fact that she had lead poisoning--which was unaccountable as no one knew that her work had involved the use of lead until some one who had been on the job also recalled hearing the manager send a messenger out with money several times to buy a white lead powder.

Sadie was sick in the hospital for six months--(losing $10 per week). She said her employer bought off several of her witnesses, but before the case came to trial two years later several of them also became ill and consequently decided to testify for her. The employer appealed to the girl's feelings and induced her, on the day of the trial, to accept $150. He said that he had had business reverses and consequently would be unable to pay in case she won.

Preliminary Report of the New York State Factory Investigating Commission (Albany, N.Y.: The Argus Company 1912), vol. 1, pp. 488-489.

Roosevelt Saves the Forests (1907)
Greedy or shortsighted Americans had plundered the nation's forests and mineral resources with incredible rapacity. President Roosevelt, a one-time Dakota cattle rancher, provided the lagging conservation movement with dynamic leadership. Under the Forest Reserve Act of 1891, he set aside about 150 million acres of government timberland as national forest reserves--more than three times as much as his three predecessors had saved. The "predatory interests" complained bitterly, and in this private letter Roosevelt took them to task. Actually, the worst offenders among the "skinners" were the small-fry lumbermen. The big trusts, though grasping, were in some degree governed by the reforestation needs of long-term lumbering. What advantages would result from Roosevelt's policy as he described it in the following letter?

As to the forest reserves, their creation has damaged just one class, that is, the great lumber barons: the managers and owners of those lumber companies which by illegal, fraudulent, or unfair methods have desired to get possession of the valuable timber of the public domain, to skin the land, and to abandon it when impoverished well-nigh to the point of worthlessness.

There are some small men who have wanted to get hold of this lumber land for improper purposes, but they are not powerful or influential, and though they have sometimes been put forward to cause an agitation, the real beneficiaries of the destruction of the forest reserves would be the great lumber companies, which would speedily monopolize them.

If it had not been for the creation of the present system of forest reserves, practically every acre of timberland in the West would now be controlled or be on the point of being controlled by one huge lumber trust. The object of the beneficiaries of this trust would be to exhuast the resources of the country for their own immediate pecuniary benefit, and then when they had rendered it well-nigh worthless to turn it contemptuously over to settlers, who would find too late that those responsible for such conditions had betrayed them and had been false to the public.

The policy of the Government is to put actual settlers on every plot of agricultural ground within the forest reserves, and then, instead of turning these forests over to great corporations or standing by with supine indifference while they are raided by timber thieves, to enforce the law with strict honesty against all men, big or little, who try to rob the public domain; and all the time to permit the freest use of the timber, consistent with preserving the forests for the benefit of the next generation. . . .

It is absolutely necessary to ascertain in practical fashion the best methods of reforestation, and only the National Government can do this successfully.

In the East, the states are now painfully, and at great expense, endeavoring to undo the effects of their former shortsighted policy in throwing away their forest lands. Congress has before it bills to establish by purchase great reserves in the White Mountains and the Southern Appalachians, and the only argument against the bills is that of their great expense. New York and Pennsylvania are now, late in the day, endeavoring themselves to protect the forests which guard the headwaters of their streams. Michigan and Wisconsin have already had their good timber stripped from their forests by the great lumber companies. But the Western states, far more fortunate than their Eastern sisters in their regard, can now reserve their forests for the good of all their citizens, without expense, if they choose to show the requisite foresight.

The West Protests Conservation (1907)
The new forest-reserve policies often worked a hardship on honest western settlers, who sometimes had to get permission from a federal official before they could lawfully cut a stick of firewood. The government, they charged, was more concerned with preserving trees than people. The governor of Colorado, disturbed by the large-scale withdrawals of western timber and coal lands by Washington, summoned a Public Lands Convention to meet in Denver in 1907. The deliberations of this body inspired the following editorial in a San Francisco newspaper. Did the West really oppose conservation? Was the East unfair in its demands?

The convention which has just adjourned at Denver is the first body of importance that has dealt with the subject of the disposal of the public lands of the United States. Considering the fact that the country has been in the real estate business for more than a century, and that during that period it has, by hook and crook, chiefly by crook, disposed of the major part of its holdings, it seems like a case of locking the stable door after nearly all of the horses have been stolen. The only question left to determine is whether the people who have permitted the theft of the horses, and who lent a hand in the stealing, shall be allowed to enjoy the most of the benefits which may accrue from taking good care of the steeds which still remain in the stalls.

The Far West, in which all the lands--coal-bearing, forest, pasture, and agricultural--still remaining in the possession of the government are to be found, has formally gone on record in this matter, and demands that the new states be treated with the same consideration as those commonwealths which have already divided their patrimony among their individual citizens. The Denver Convention in its resolutions recognizes the wisdom of treating the lands of the nation as a public trust, but it insisted that this trust should be administered for the benefit of the states wherein the lands still remaining are situated and not for the benefit of the people of the older states of the Union, who have no lands, forests, mines, or pastures that are not in the possession of private individuals.

Congress will be unable to resist the justice of this contention. As a rule, that body is not overswift to recognize the rights of those sections of the Union with a small representation in the Lower House, but the American people, when they understand the matter thoroughly, may be depended upon to prevent an injustice. Just now the popular impression at the East is that the Far West is opposed to the conservation of its forests, and that it supports the efforts of unscrupulous grabbers to steal the public domain. But the campaign of education inaugurated by the Public Lands Convention will soon convince it that all that is asked for is even justice for the new states, and that demands that the profits arising from the eleventh-hour reform shall not be absorbed by the states that have eaten their cake and now wish to share with those who have scarcely had a chance to nibble theirs.

San Francisco Chronicle, June 22, 1907.

Gifford Pinchot Advocates Damming the Hetch Hetchy Valley (1913)
The city of San Francisco's proposal to dam the Tuolumne River, creating a reservoir in the Hetch Hetchy Valley within the boundaries of Yosemite National Park, stirred passionate debate in the early twentieth century. The controversy vividly demonstrated the division of "conservationists" into utilitarians and preservationists. The issue came to a dramatic climax in 1913, when Congress passed the Raker Act, authorizing construction of the dam. In his testimony before the House Committee on the Public Lands, famed conservationist Gifford Pinchot (1865-1946), chief forester of the United States in the Theodore Roosevelt administrations, offered the following rationale for the construction of the Hetch Hetchy dam. What is Pinchot's chief justification for building the dam? In what ways does he deserve his title as one of the founding fathers of the modern conservation movement?

Mr. Pinchot.

. . . So we come now face to face with the perfectly clean question of what is the best use to which this water that flows out of the Sierras can be put. As we all know, there is no use of water that is higher than the domestic use. Then, if there is, as the engineers tell us, no other source of supply that is anything like so reasonably available as this one; if this is the best, and, within reasonable limits of cost, the only means of supplying San Francisco with water, we come straight to the question of whether the advantage of leaving this valley in a state of nature is greater than the advantage of using it for the benefit of the city of San Francisco.

Now, the fundamental principle of the whole conservation policy is that of use, to take every part of the land and its resources and put it to that use in which it will best serve the most people, and I think there can be no question at all but that in this case we have an instance in which all weighty considerations demand the passage of the bill. . . .

. . . I believe if we had nothing else to consider than the delight of the few men and women who would yearly go into the Hetch Hetchy Valley, then it should be left in its natural condition. But the considerations on the other side of the question to my mind are simply overwhelming, and so much so that I have never been able to see that there was any reasonable argument against the use of this water supply by the city of San Francisco. . . .

Mr. Raker.*

Taking the scenic beauty of the park as it now stands, and the fact that the valley is sometimes swamped along in June and July, is it not a fact that if a beautiful dam is put there, as is contemplated, and as the picture is given by the engineers, with the roads contemplated around the reservoir and with other trails, it will be more beautiful than it is now, and give more opportunity for the use of the park?

Mr. Pinchot.

Whether it will be more beautiful, I doubt, but the use of the park will be enormously increased. I think there is no doubt about that.

Mr. Raker.

In other words, to put it a different way, there will be more beauty accessible than there is now?

Mr. Pinchot.

Much more beauty will be accessible than now.

Mr. Raker.

And by putting in roads and trails the Government, as well as the citizens of the Government, will get more pleasure out of it than at the present time?

Mr. Pinchot.

You might say from the standpoint of enjoyment of beauty and the greatest good to the greatest number, they will be conserved by the passage of this bill, and there will be a great deal more use of the beauty of the park than there is now.

Mr. Raker.

Have you seen Mr. John Muir's criticism of the bill? You know him?

Mr. Pinchot.

Yes, sir; I know him very well. He is an old and a very good friend of mine. I have never been able to agree with him in his attitude toward the Sierras for the reason that my point of view has never appealed to him at all. When I became Forester and denied the right to exclude sheep and cows from the Sierras, Mr. Muir** thought I had made a great mistake, because I allowed the use by an acquired right of a large number of people to interfere with what would have been the utmost beauty of the forest. In this case I think he has unduly given away to beauty as against use.

*John E. Raker, representative from California.

**John Muir (1838-1914), a Scottish-born American naturalist, was a leading critic of the Hetch Hetchy dam proposal. See the next selection.

U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Committee on the Public Lands, Hearings, Hetch Hetchy Dam Site, 63d Cong., 1st Sess. (June 25-28, July 7, 1913), pp. 25ff.

John Muir Damns the Hetch Hetchy Dam (1912)
John Muir (1838-1914), born in Scotland and raised in Wisconsin, arrived in California in 1868 and established himself as an eminent naturalist and passionate crusader for wilderness preservation. On what grounds does he disagree with Gifford Pinchot's position on the Hetch Hetchy dam? In what ways do their two arguments continue to resonate in present-day debates about the environment?

Yosemite is so wonderful that we are apt to regard it as an exceptional creation, the only valley of its kind in the world; but Nature is not so poor as to have only one of anything. Several other yosemites have been discovered in the Sierra that occupy the same relative positions on the range and were formed by the same forces in the same kind of granite. One of these, the Hetch Hetchy Valley, is in the Yosemite National Park about twenty miles from Yosemite. . . .

. . . [As] the Merced River flows through Yosemite, so does the Tuolumne through Hetch Hetchy. The walls of both are of gray granite, rise abruptly from the floor, are sculptured in the same style and in both every rock is a glacier monument. . . .

. . . Hetch Hetchy Valley, far from being a plain, common, rock-bound meadow, as many who have not seen it seem to suppose, is a grand landscape garden, one of Nature's rarest and most precious mountain temples. As in Yosemite, the sublime rocks of its walls seem to glow with life, whether leaning back in repose or standing erect in thoughtful attitudes, giving welcome to storms and calms alike, their brows in the sky, their feet set in the groves and gay flowery meadows, while birds, bees, and butterflies help the river and waterfalls to stir all the air into music--things frail and fleeting and types of permanence meeting here and blending, just as they do in Yosemite, to draw her lovers into close and confiding communion with her.

Sad to say, this most precious and sublime feature of the Yosemite National Park, one of the greatest of all our natural resources for the uplifting joy and peace and health of the people, is in danger of being dammed and made into a reservoir to help supply San Francisco with water and light, thus flooding it from wall to wall and burying its gardens and groves one or two hundred feet deep. This grossly destructive commercial scheme has long been planned and urged (though water as pure and abundant can be got from sources outside of the people's park, in a dozen different places), because of the comparative cheapness of the dam and of the territory which it is sought to divert from the great uses to which it was dedicated in the Act of 1890 establishing the Yosemite National Park.

The making of gardens and parks goes on with civilization all over the world, and they increase both in size and number as their value is recognized. Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where Nature may heal and cheer and give strength to body and soul alike. This natural beauty-hunger is made manifest in the little window-sill gardens of the poor, though perhaps only a geranium slip in a broken cup, as well as in the carefully tended rose and lily gardens of the rich, the thousands of spacious city parks and botanical gardens, and in our magnificent National Parks--the Yellowstone, Yosemite, Sequoia, etc.--Nature's sublime wonderlands, the admiration and joy of the world. Nevertheless, like anything else worth while, from the very beginning, however well guarded, they have always been subject to attack by despoiling gain-seekers and mischief-makers of every degree from Satan to Senators, eagerly trying to make everything immediately and selfishly commercial, with schemes disguised in smug-smiling philanthropy, industriously, sham-piously crying, "Conservation, conservation, panutilization," that man and beast may be fed and the dear Nation made great. Thus long ago a few enterprising merchants utilized the Jerusalem temple as a place of business instead of a place of prayer, changing money, buying and selling cattle and sheep and doves. . . .

That anyone would try to destroy such a place seems incredible; but sad experience shows that there are people good enough and bad enough for anything. The proponents of the dam scheme bring forward a lot of bad arguments to prove that the only righteous thing to do with the people's parks is to destroy them bit by bit as they are able. Their arguments are curiously like those of the devil, devised for the destruction of the first garden--so much of the very best Eden fruit going to waste; so much of the best Tuolumne water and Tuolumne scenery going to waste. . . .

These temple destroyers, devotees of ravaging commercialism, seem to have a perfect contempt for Nature, and, instead of lifting their eyes to the God of the mountains, lift them to the Almighty Dollar.

Dam Hetch Hetchy! As well dam for water-tanks the people's cathedrals and churches, for no holier temple has ever been consecrated by the heart of man.

John Muir, The Yosemite (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday and Co., 1962; originally published 1912), pp. 192-202.

Senator Robert Owen Supports Women (1910)
Wedded to the tried and true, President Howard Taft was no enthusiast for women's suffrage. He believed the issue was one that should be handled by the individual states. As late as 1912 he wrote privately, "I cannot change my view . . . just to suit the exigencies of the campaign, and if it is going to hurt me, I think it will have to hurt me." But the embattled women now had an increasingly strong argument. Rapid industrialization after the Civil War had lured millions of women from the home into the office and the factory, where they were competing with men. By 1910 four states--Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and Idaho--had granted unrestricted suffrage to women, and the progressive upheaval of the era added great impetus to the reform. Senator Robert L. Owen of Oklahoma, who had earlier demanded citizenship for Native Americans, here makes a speech to a learned society favoring women's suffrage. What ideas about the nature of womanhood underlie his argument? What changes in society does he think women's suffrage will entail?

Women compose one-half of the human race. In the last forty years, women in gradually increasing numbers have been compelled to leave the home and enter the factory and workshop. Over seven million women are so employed, and the remainder of the sex are employed largely in domestic services. A full half of the work of the world is done by women. A careful study of the matter has demonstrated the vital fact that these working women receive a smaller wage for equal work than men do, and that the smaller wage and harder conditions imposed on the woman worker are due to the lack of the ballot.

Many women have a very hard time, and if the ballot would help them, even a little, I should like to see them have it. . . . Equal pay for equal work is the first great reason justifying this change of governmental policy.

There are others reasons which are persuasive: First, women, take it all in all, are the equals of men in intelligence, and no man has the hardihood to assert the contrary. . . .

The man is usually better informed with regard to state governent, but women are better informed about house government, and she can learn state government with as much facility as he can learn how to instruct children, properly feed and clothe the household, care for the sick, play on the piano, or make a house beautiful. . . .

The woman ballot will not revolutionize the world. Its results in Colorado, for example, might have been anticipated. First, it did give women better wages for equal work; second, it led immediately to a number of laws the women wanted, and the first laws they demanded were laws for the protection of the children of the state, making it a misdemeanor to contribute to the delinquency of a child; laws for the improved care of defective children; also, the Juvenile Court for the conservation of wayward boys and girls; the better care of the insane, the deaf, the dumb, the blind; the curfew bell to keep children off the streets at night; raising the age of consent for girls; improving the reformatories and prisons of the state; improving the hospital services of the state; improving the sanitary laws affecting the health of the homes of the state. Their [women's] interest in the public health is a matter of great importance. Above all, there resulted laws for improving the school system.

Several important results followed. Both political parties were induced to put up cleaner, better men, for the women would not stand a notoriously corrupt or unclean candidate. The headquarters of political parties became more decent, and the polling places became respectable. The bad women, enslaved by mercenary vice, do not vote, and good women do vote in as great proportion as men. Every evil prophecy against granting the suffrage has failed. The public men of Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, and Idaho give it a cordial support.

The testimony is universal:

First, it has not made women mannish; they still love their homes and children just the same as ever, and are better able to protect themselves and their children because of the ballot.

Second, they have not become office-seekers, nor pothouse politicians. They have not become swaggerers and insolent on the streets. They still teach good manners to men, as they always have done. It [suffrage] has made women broader and greatly increased the understanding of the community at large of the problems of good government; of proper sanitation, of pure food, or clean water, and all such matters in which intelligent women would naturally take an interest.

It has not absolutely regenerated society, but it has improved it. It has raised the educational qualification of the suffrage, and has elevated the moral standard of the suffrage, because there are more criminal men than criminal women. . . .

The great doctrine of the American Republic that "all governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed" justifies the plea of one-half of the people, the women, to exercise the suffrage. The doctrine of the American Revolutionary War that taxation without representation is unendurable justifies women in exercising the suffrage.

Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 35, Supplement (May 1910): 6-9, passim.

A Woman Assails Women's Suffrage (1910)
As late as 1910 many women plainly did not want to shoulder the heavy civic responsibilities that would come with the ballot. One argument was that each sex was superior in its own sphere--women in the home, men in the outside world--and that a separation was best for all concerned. Agitators for women's suffrage feared that if their cause were submitted to a vote by all women, it would be defeated. The suffragists argued that the women who wanted the vote ought to have it. Mrs. Gilbert E. Jones, an opponent of votes for women, here pleads her case before a scholarly group. How do her views differ from those of Senator Owen, just given? Which of them esteemed women more highly? How do Jones's views compare with those of Jane Addams (see Chapter 27, Jane Addams Demands the Vote for Women, 1910)

The anti-suffragists are not organizing or rushing into committees, societies, or associations, and their doings are not being cried out from the house-tops. Yet they show by undeniable facts, easily verified, that woman suffrage bills and proposals have been defeated and turned down at the rate of once in every twenty-seven days in the state legislatures for the last twelve years. . . .

A great many states have granted to women school suffrage, but only a partisan or sectarian issue will bring out the woman's vote. In Massachusetts women have voted on school boards, and after thirty years' training, only 2 or 3 percent of the women register to vote. This hardly can be pronounced "success," or worth while. . . .

Taxation without representation is tyranny, but we must be very careful to define what we mean by the phrase. If we adopt the suffrage attitude, "I pay taxes, therefore I should vote," the natural conclusion is that everybody who pays taxes should vote, or we have a tyrannical form of government. Remember that this argument is used in an unqualified way. We have a "tyranny" here, we are told, because some women pay taxes, yet do not vote. If this is true without any qualification, it must be true not only of women, but of everybody. Accordingly, this government is tyrannical if corporations pay taxes, but do not vote; if aliens pay taxes, but do not vote; if minors pay taxes, but do not vote; if anybody pays taxes, but does not vote. The only correct conclusion is, not that women should vote because some of them pay taxes, but that every taxpayer should be given the privilege of the ballot. . . .

A very conscientious investigation by this League* cannot find that the ballot will help the wage-earning woman. Women must resort to organization, association, and trade unions, and then they can command and maintain a standard wage. Supply and demand will do the rest. Women are not well trained and often very deficient and unskilled in most of their occupations. They are generally only supplementary workers and drop their work when they marry. When married, and home and children are to be cared for, they are handicapped way beyond their strength. Married women should be kept out of industry, rather than urged into it, as scientists, physicians, and sociologists all state that as women enter into competitive industrial life with men, just so does the death rate of little children increase and the birth rate decrease.

Anti-suffragists deplore the fact that women are found in unsuitable occupations. But the suffragists glory in the fact that there are women blacksmiths, baggage masters, brakemen, undertakers, and women political "bosses" in Colorado.

The suffragists call this progress, independence, and emancipation of women. "Anti's" ask for more discrimination and better selection of industrial occupations for wage-earning women. Knowing that the average woman has half of the physical strength of the average man, and the price she must pay when in competition with him is too great for her ultimate health and her hope of motherhood, the "Anti's" ask for caution and extreme consideration before new activities are entered upon. . . .

The suffrage leaders say that a woman without the vote has no self-respect. We must then look to the suffrage states to find the fulfillment of the woman's true position, complete--worthy, exalted, and respected. But what do we find when we look at Utah! Women have voted there for forty years. Mormonism and woman suffrage were coincident. By the very nature of its teachings, as indicated by Brigham Young, the basis of the Mormon Church is woman--and the Mormon Church is the greatest political machine in the four suffrage States. . . .

The question of woman suffrage should be summed up in this way: Has granting the ballot to women in the two suffrage states where they have had it for forty years brought about any great reforms or great results? No--Wyoming has many more men than women, so the results cannot be measured. The Mormon women of Utah are not free American citizens. They are under the Elder's supreme power, and vote accordingly, and polygamy has been maintained by the woman's vote, and is still to be found, although forbidden, because women have political power.

Have the saloons been abolished in any of the suffrage states? No.

Do men still drink and gamble? Yes, without a doubt.

Have the slums been done away with? Indeed no.

Are the streets better cleaned in the states where women vote? No, they are quite as bad as in New York City and elsewhere.

Have the red-light districts been cleared away? Decidedly not, and they can be reckoned upon as a political factor, when they are really needed.

Have women purified politics? No, not in the least.

Have women voted voluntarily? Some do; but thousands are carried to the polls in autos and carriages; otherwise they would not vote.

Has pure food and pure milk been established by the woman's vote? Not at all.

Have women's wages been increased because women vote? No, indeed.

Have women equal pay for equal work? Not any more than in New York City.

Are there laws on the statute books that would give women equal pay for equal work? No, and never will be.

Are women treated with more respect in the four suffrage states than elsewhere? Not at all--certainly not in Utah. . . .

[The "anti's" also argued that womenfolk were adequately represented by their menfolk; that women already exercised a strong influence indirectly ("harem government"); that suffrage would end chivalry; that women were already overburdened in the home; that family quarrels over partisan issues would increase the divorce rate; that females were too emotional; and that women, if allowed to vote, would soon be serving on juries and forced to hear "indecent testimony." Despite such objections, some of them frivolous, nationwide women's suffrage finally triumphed with the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920.]

*The National League for the Civic Education of Women, an antisuffrage group.

Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 35, Supplement (May 1910): 16-21, passim.