domhoff, william. the death of state autonomy theory - a critique of skocpol's protecting soldiers...

8/7/2019 Domhoff, William. The Death of State Autonomy Theory - A Critique of Skocpol's Protecting Soldiers and Mothers

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The Death of State Autonomy Theory: A Critique of

Skocpol's Protecting Soldiers And Mothers

by G. William Domhoff

September 2005

After claiming throughout the 1980s that rival theorists had ignored the independentpower of "the state" (i.e., the government) in the United States, sociologist ThedaSkocpol's lengthy 1992 book, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers (714 pages, plus eightpages of Preface) proved to the beginning of the end for state autonomy theory as it wasapplied to this country. She in effect pronounced her old claims about the United Statesdead when she wrote in her Preface that "my state-centered theoretical frame ofreference had evolved into a fully 'polity-centered approach,'" meaning that socialmovements, coalitions of pressure groups, and political parties must be given their due

in understanding power in America (Skocpol, 1992, p. x).

Skocpol insisted that her view was still distinctive, calling it "historicalinstitutionalism," but the new version sounded more like the pluralism of the 1950s and1960s than anything else. We are told, for example, that the lack of governmentbureaucracies and an established church in the United States left ample space for"voluntary associations," with plenty of highly educated women and men to join them(529). (All page numbers appearing alone in parentheses refer to Skocpol's book.) Inaddition, "broad, transpartisan coalitions of groups--and ultimately legislators--had to beassembled for each particular issue" (368). Skocpol may put a little more emphasis onpolitical institutions and the structured nature of the polity than past pluralists did, but infact voluntary associations, shifting coalitions, and political parties are the essence ofmainstream pluralism. One thing is certain: there is little mention of corporate leaders,classes, or class conflict, so her perspective is even further removed from a classdominance theory than it was before. Indeed, it is surprising that she gives so littleattention to business and class in the era that saw the rise of the giant corporation and anationwide upper class based upon it. For example, half of the largest corporations in1899 were created that year and 23 new corporations joined the top hundred in 1901,but Skocpol barely acknowledges these dramatic economic changes in her discussion ofalleged political transformations.

Although Skocpol looked at a number of legislative issues in the Progressive Era inarriving at this conclusion, of which more in a minute, her change in perspective wasmost influenced by her study of women's power on certain of these issues, or "genderrelations and identities," as she puts it (p. x). She found the women of this era to be sosuccessful in their efforts to influence the state from outside it, even without the right tovote at the national level, or in most states, that she decided she could no longer talkabout the American state as autonomous.

However, I think the legislative conflicts that Skocpol studied --for example, theexpansion of disability pensions for Civil War veteran's, accident insurance and old-agepensions for male workers, and various provisions for mothers and working women--

show something very different from what she concluded. They reveal that the corporatecommunity was the decisive factor in how an issue was decided. If it was for the


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legislation, or indifferent, the issue won. If it was against the issue, the issue lost. As forthe women activists studied by Skocpol, the most influential ones were mainstreammembers of the dominant class, and as I will show in detail toward the end of thiscritique, they showed policy solidarity with the men of their class on every issue inwhich they were involved.

Before I discuss the substance of Skocpol's book, however, I first provide some contextfor her work.

The Origins of State Autonomy Theory

Skocpol started out in the 1970s as the main advocate of state autonomy theory inAmerican sociology and political science. She began her research career studying therevolutions in France, Russia, and China (Skocpol, 1979). This research led her to theconclusion that states had the "potential" for autonomy and that this autonomy had beenoverlooked by the "society-centric" researchers who studied the United States. She

further claimed that they ignored the fact that the state system and the economic systemsoperate on the basis of different principles and dynamics, which was a slap at Marxistswhile ignoring the fact that power structure researchers should not be tarred with thesame brush. (She never mentions C. Wright Mills's work on power, for example.) Shethen created high expectations among political sociologists and political scientists withan "exploratory essay" applying her theory to the New Deal, criticizing previous workby pluralists, neo-Marxists, and power structure researchers (Skocpol, 1980, p. 199).The essay was announced as the beginning of a larger project to explain the origins ofthe New Deal and later additions to the American welfare state.

This early essay was followed by a large number of articles and edited books bySkocpol and her students drawing on a wide range of studies by historians who look atNew Deal legislation, especially in relation to the origins of the welfare state (e.g.,Finegold, 1981; Finegold & Skocpol, 1984; Orloff, 1993; Skocpol & Finegold, 1982;Skocpol & Ikenberry, 1983). However, Skocpol thought that further work on the earlyorigins of the major New Deal policies was necessary, which was the reason sheundertook the research for Protecting Soldiers and Mothers.

Surprisingly, then, for reasons Skocpol offers in her Preface, the book tells us virtuallynothing about the social support programs of the New Deal. Instead, it focuses primarilyon the expansion of the Civil War pension plan, which ended when the last survivors of

that war died, and on the accomplishments of the women's movement during theProgressive Era. There is also a section on the several failures and one success of malereform efforts for governmental social programs in the Progressive Era. Whether any ofthis has anything to do with the New Deal or later developments is one of the mainquestions that will be explored in my critique.

Perhaps sensing that some readers might be disappointed that she does not fulfill herpromise to enlighten us on the New Deal, Skocpol constantly reminds readers abouthow important her findings supposedly are by the use of vivid adjectives. She tells us inthe first sentence of the Preface that she has discovered "startling facts" (vii). She chidesother scholars for allegedly overlooking or ignoring the stories that she tells, but she

also says that much of her material comes from secondary sources (vii, 61, 102). (Infact, it all comes from secondary sources; this is a work of theoretical synthesis, not of


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original archival research.) She calls many organizations and people "remarkable."Nineteenth-century political parties earn this designation (75), as does the Bureau ofPensions in the 1870s for its clerical capacity (532). The women who worked forreforms in the Progressive Era were even more "remarkable;" she uses the term tendifferent times to describe them or their efforts. When such glowing terms as "adept,"

"amazing," "apt," "astute," and "bold" are added to the list, it is clear that Skocpol has astrongly positive attitude toward those she studies.

Skocpol's emphasis is summed up in a passage she uses from James Bryce, one of those19th century European visitors to the United States that mainstream social scientistslove to quote in an undisguised appeal to authority: "In America the great moving forcesare the parties. The government counts for less than in Europe, the parties count formore..." (64, 72). Granting that the government "counts for less than in Europe" is quitea concession for Skocpol, who criticized other social scientists for overlooking thepower of the state in America, but no apologies are offered. She spends a full chaptersummarizing standard sources on parties, machines, patronage, and bosses in the

nineteenth century, but with no discussion of the role of wealthy campaign donors, whowere far more important in the 19th century than is generally realized (Alexander, 1992;Lundberg, 1937, pp. 54-64). The fabled political machines of the past were oiled fromthe top with money (Chambers, 1964, pp. 151-153; Katz, 1968; Myers, 1917, pp. 50,114, 126, 153; Zink, 1930, pp. 39-41, 105-106, 156-157, 351-354).

Another new emphasis in her polity-centered theory is on the importance of "fit"between a group and the polity in understanding the success and failure of rival policyinitiatives. If a group happens to have the organizational and rhetorical capacities that"fit" with the structure of the polity and the going cultural discourse, then it is morelikely to enjoy success than a group that doesn't (e.g., 54-57). This is one of the keyways that the shapes and contours of the state matter greatly, for these contoursdetermine which groups will have "fit" and which won't. The potential for a tautologicalargument is very great here. Those who win must have had fit, those who failed musthave lacked it.

In the context of her discussion of contours and fits, Skocpol emphasizes that the UnitedStates is a "non-parliamentary polity" that lacks "strong civil service ministries" and"programmatically oriented political parties" (253). The presidential system and single-member districts lead to a two-party system. The courts were very important in the 19thcentury as bastions of protection for private property. None of this is news to anyone. It

is the reason why few social scientists were ever "state-centered" in trying to understandsocial power in the United States. There is one further point Skocpol thinks has escapedmost other people. Policies not only flow from institutions, they reshape theseinstitutions (e.g., 531), but this, too, is common knowledge.

She invokes her favorite phrase since 1980, that the 19th century American state is oneof "courts and parties." But I do not think this is a good way to conceive of the statebecause it makes the courts sound too independent of the parties and the White House.If the issue is power, then the question is who has the resources to win the presidency,which has the authority to appoint federal judges, as recent battles between liberals andultra-conservatives over the confirmation of judges once again show. If corporate

leaders have the major role through campaign donations in narrowing the field ofpossible presidential candidates, then of course the Supreme Court is going to be made


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up predominantly of corporate lawyers, as was most certainly the case in theProgressive Era (Burch, 1981).

It is now time to see what Skocpol claims in her case studies. What she says at thedescriptive level is well known and unexceptionable. But there are large areas of

disagreement from the point of view of a class-dominance theory at key conceptualjunctures, especially in terms of the importance of class conflict in understandingseveral of her cases.

Do Civil War Pensions Matter?

Skocpol is extremely impressed with the extent and generosity of the disability pensionsthat were paid to veterans of the Civil War and their survivors, and with the fact thatthese pensions became "more liberal" over the decades (110). They became a kind ofhidden welfare state, decreasing the need for old-age pensions during that era. In 1873extra monies were added to widow's pensions for each dependent child; in 1890 the

government extended the pensions to any veteran who at some time had becomedisabled for manual work; in 1906 the pensions became available by reason of beingover age 62 (107, 111, 129). By 1915 the percentage of surviving veterans on pensionshad risen to a little over 93%. A disproportionate number of these veterans lived insmall towns and rural areas in the North and Midwest, and many of them could bedescribed as middle class (136-138). They were Anglo-American and Irish-American,and were concentrated in a relative handful of states. Skocpol thinks the pension systemfor this small and narrow spectrum has consequences for understanding the old-agepensions that were enacted during the New Deal.

Skocpol makes a reasonable case that the increasing generosity of the Civil War pensionsystem was at least in part a function of the close party competition betweenRepublicans and Democrats in the 1870s and 1880s (e.g., 115, 118-124, 130). In fact,the competition tended to be closest in those states that had the largest number ofpensioners, evidence for the fact that the pensions had become a form of patronage(124). By the late 1880s, Republicans were the main proponents of a generous pensionsystem for veterans. For Skocpol, this story is important because she thinks it supportsher claim that parties were predominant in the nineteenth century.

However, it turns out that there is more to it than parties. The original pension disabilityact of 1862 was extremely generous to begin with because of the uncertainties and

difficulties of raising a volunteer army in a hurry (106-107). Thus, it would have beenvery difficult not to be generous with these veterans as they aged, especially when werecall the extreme carnage and bitter memories from that war. Moreover, much of theimpetus in the 1870s for the increasing number of pensioners came from "a fewprosperous pension lawyers," forerunners of today's trial lawyers, who made a goodliving by obtaining pensions for veterans and then collecting a fee from them (116).Skocpol reports this fact, then downplays it by saying the parties quickly took control ofthe action (117). In the 1880's organized veterans played a role in improving theirpension plan, but Skocpol argues that their strong organization was the product oflegislative changes brought about by the parties, making the vets' organization anauxiliary of the parties as much as a pressure upon them (111).


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Beyond all this, one of the biggest factors in the increasingly generous pension systemwas the growing budget surplus created by the high tariffs instituted by the Northernindustrialists and Republicans as part of their victory over the plantation South. Skocpolstresses that pensions were taking an "astounding" 41.5% of the federal budget in 1893(128), but from the point of view of the Republicans and industrialists the pensions were

killing two birds with one stone. They were siphoning off the budget surplus, therebyreducing some of the pressure to lower tariffs, and they were providing patronage in keyswing states, thereby helping to keep Republicans in office (e.g., 125-126). Sincepensions for Civil War veterans were a safe and useful way to spend money theindustrialists did not really want the government to have (they just wanted tariffprotection), I do not think there is anything "astounding" about the percentage of thebudget spent in this way. By the time Skocpol is done with this case study, it seemsclear that several factors were at least as important as party politics involved in CivilWar pensions.

Moreover, the extent of these pensions may not be as impressive to everyone as it is to

Skocpol. In 1900, for example, when the population of the country was 76.1 million,with 3.1 million age 65 or over, there were only 741,259 veterans with disabilitypensions, and by 1915 there were a mere 424,000 (109, Table 2). The relatively smallnumber of people still receiving pensions 35 to 45 years after the war does not strike meas a big deal. Skocpol estimates that 35% of Northern men over age 65 had a Civil Warpension in 1910 (135), but the figures she presents for everyone 65 and over in 1910 inAppendix 1 (541-542) are not as striking. Only 16 states had 20% or more of their entire65-and-over population on a Civil War pension; Kansas was the highest state with30.4%. (The then-tiny District of Columbia, with 6, 399 people, had 37.6%). In terms ofactual numbers of people, only 11 states had 20,000 or more on such pensions; thehighest were Pennsylvania (67, 371), Ohio (66, 920), and New York (58,670). Therewere only five states where the 20,000 or more pensioners made up 20% or more of theage-65-and-over population: Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Missouri, and Kansas. Whenwe recall that a disproportionate number of these pensioners lived in rural areas andsmall towns, it is hard to see their presence having much of a social impact.

But whatever the impact of the numbers, is any of this important if the goal is tounderstand the origins of the welfare state during the New Deal? According to Skocpol,charges of corruption in relation to these pensions by Mugwumps and other moralistswere a big factor in causing the delay of the welfare state (e.g., 59, 285). Quite frankly, Idoubt the importance of this factor in explaining why the welfare state was later in the

United States than most of Western Europe. The charge of corruption was more likely arationalization, not a cause. First, there is little or no evidence of widespread corruption,as Skocpol acknowledges (143-145), and only members of the higher classes begrudgedwhat was in effect an old-age pension to a few hundred thousand "morally deserving"veterans (148-151). True enough, it is the "perception" that counts in politics, but ifthere is no evidence for the perception, then the more the likelihood it wasmanufactured for political reasons. Supporting this point, there is much evidence thatindustrialists and plantation owners vigorously opposed old-age pensions during theProgressive Era for economic and political reasons (Quadagno, 1988). It is more likelythat they are the cause of the delay.

In terms of the later American welfare state, Skocpol ends up with one possible usefulpoint from her wrong turn into the dead end of Civil War pensions. Memories of the


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charges of "corruption" in relation to these pensions "helped to shore up thedetermination of New Deal policy makers to emphasize contributory forms ofunemployment and old-age insurance in the Social Security Act of 1935," that is, a planwhere both the employers and the employees contribute to the fund (533,). "Helped" isjust the right word, however, for there were more important factors. Most importantly,

this is the kind of system favored by insurance companies (Klein, 2003; Sass, 1997) andby the large industrialists and their hired experts who had the most direct impact on theactual formulation of the Social Security Act (Domhoff, 1996, Chapter 5; see also thelatest edition of Domhoff's Who Rules America). From their point of view, acontributory system could be cheaper for them and at the same time pay higher benefitsto workers. Besides, such a plan made it possible to justify pensions of different sizesthat reflected the size of employee contributions, thereby reinforcing wage differentialsin the labor market. Furthermore, politicians liked contributory systems because theycould claim that the pensions supposedly did not come out of taxes (by which theymeant the usual kind of general taxes paid by everyone).

Polity Change or Class Conflict?

Skocpol's next stop is the movement for various welfare benefits for workers during theProgressive Era--industrial accident insurance, health insurance, unemploymentinsurance, and old-age pensions. To make a long story short, they all lost exceptindustrial accident insurance (workmen's compensation). This part of her book makes agood contribution by showing how the differing state systems of Great Britain and theUnited States contributed to liberal-labor victories on these issues in Great Britain anddefeats in the United States because of disagreements between reformers and organizedlabor. Like all power structure researchers, I agree with her that the structure of the statematters even though we disagree on the degree to which the state has autonomy.

Skocpol begins this section with a lengthy history of a small organization of experts andreformers, the American Association for Labor Legislation, arguing vigorously that itwas not dependent upon its handful of wealthy donors (183-184). While I have arguedjust the opposite based on an earlier study of the group (Domhoff, 1990, pp. 44-52), Iagree with her many other claims about this organization. It had elitist views and did nottry to reach out to grassroots groups. Much of its program was opposed by mainstreamindustrialists and organized labor alike. It lost its campaigns for health insurance andunemployment insurance, and gave up on old-age pensions before it started. Further, Iagree that these middle-class experts shrank from an alliance with organized labor

because labor wanted noncontributory old-age pensions and laws that would improve itsability to organize and strike (209-210).

Only in the case of workmen's compensation were the reformers in the AmericanAssociation for Labor legislation on the winning side, but by any account exceptSkocpol's this victory was won by a united corporate community that wanted the lawchanged because juries were deciding too many law suits in favor of injured workers(Castrovinci, 1976; Domhoff, 1970, pp. 197-201; Fishback & Kantor, 2000; Weinstein,1968, Chapter 2). Even the ultra-conservative National Association of Manufacturerswas overwhelmingly in favor of workmen's comp. Organized labor finally went alongreluctantly.


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What does the overall line-up of victories and defeats on social welfare legislation in theProgressive Era demonstrate? I think it clearly shows that the corporate community wasvictorious on all four issues under consideration. It opposed the three losing programsand supported the one program that won. No other group can match that record. Not themiddle-class reformers of the American Association for Labor Legislation, who lost

three out of four, and not organized labor, which supported a non-starter,noncontributory old-age pensions, and had to be pushed into supporting workmen'scompensation insurance. If traditional power indicators were used by Skocpol, whichthey are not, she would have to say that these four victories for the corporatecommunity in the decisional arena are support for a class-dominance theory.

However, Skocpol does not think in these terms. She has a much more general, and inmy mind, vague, explanation for why both the reformers and labor lost out. Therewasn't a good "fit" between the movement for welfare legislation and the polity becausethe polity was undergoing a major transformation: "In clear contrast to contemporaryBritain, the United States at the turn of the twentieth century was undergoing a

transformation from party-dominated patronage democracy to interest-group-orientedregulatory politics, a transformation that discouraged the inauguration of a modernpaternalist state" (285). Then too, organized labor didn't trust the state because of theharsh way it had been treated by the courts, so it would not go for the statist solutionsadvocated by the reformers. That is, there wasn't a good "fit" between reformers andlabor in the United States for a variety of reasons that Skocpol spells out in a usefuldiscussion of trade unions and social legislation (chapter 4). In my terms, the liberal-labor coalition was limited in its scope, to the degree that it existed at all.

Still, Skocpol almost hits upon the key factor in these conflicts at the very end of heranalysis. After discussing parties, courts, governmental contexts, and the state's lack of"autonomous administrative organs" for many pages, she says straight out that pro-worker social policies were opposed by "middle and upper classes" that were "not aboutto support new social benefits that might lubricate ties between politicians and the state"(310). This comes very close to addressing the basic problem: class conflict. It alsocomes close to explaining why capitalists then and now want a small domestic statethey can dominate: they were/are afraid that a large and perhaps more autonomous statemight help the working class. States that help workers are states that disrupt capitalistcontrol of labor markets, and such disruption cuts into the profits and power ofcapitalists. If Skocpol and other state autonomy theorists could bring themselves to seethe importance of this basic conflict in shaping how capitalists view the state, then they

could better understand why the American state still lacks "autonomous administrativeorgans." The capitalists and their allies have bitterly opposed the development of suchorgans throughout American history. It is "their" state, and they aren't going to let it getaway from them without a fight.

Capitalists in other countries also opposed most social policies sought by the workingclass and reformers, but at least some of these policies passed anyhow. Why thedifference between the United States and the others? Skocpol, as noted, thinks theanswer is to be found in the nature of the polity, along with the transformative processesgoing on in the American polity at the turn of the century, but I believe those factors tobe secondary. The major issue is that the working class is weaker and the capitalist class

stronger in the United States than elsewhere. There were several intertwined reasons for


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this greater power differential, all of which were even more salient in the ProgressiveEra than later.

The first reason for this greater power differential lies in a region that is mostly ignoredby Skocpol: the South. The American working class never could be united and strong

when its Southern half was completely subordinated and without the right to vote until1965, giving Southern plantation capitalists more or less complete control of politics inthat region. The political differences between the largely nativist craft workers of theAmerican Federation of Labor and the largely immigrant industrial workers also shouldbe added to the equation (Mink, 1986). Furthermore, there is the additional problem thatthe structural factors leading to a two-party system meant that Northern workers had noplace to go except into a Democratic Party controlled by the Southern plantationcapitalists.

It is within the context of racial/ethnic divisions and the lack of a labor party that we canadd in the importance of the individualistic ideology of American workers, an

explanatory variable that is largely dismissed by Skocpol (15-22). It is not that thisindividualistic culture somehow persists in some vague fashion, as it seems to for manyvalue theorists, but that the working class could not develop the institutional forms--strong labor unions and a labor party--that would make it possible to develop andsustain a more cooperative, class-oriented consciousness, thereby overcoming theindividualistic ethos, not to mention pervasive ethnocentrism and racism. Individualisticideology persists in the working class, and matters, because it is embodied in the elite-sponsored institutions that dominate the society, and because it has not been possible inthis country to develop any counter-institutions with class-oriented and state-orientedvalues. Put another way, and contrary to Skocpol and many others, it was not the factthat there was universal white male suffrage in the 19th century that led to the absenceof a labor party, but the nature of the Southern political economy and the impossibilityof creating a third (labor) party in a structure that dictates a two-party system.

As for the capitalist class, it is stronger than in most other countries because it had nofeudal lords or state elites to contend with as it grew to power. Its leaders purposelycreated a national state with limited powers. Moreover, the plantation capitalists of theSouth feared a powerful national state even more than Northern capitalists because theyworried, rightly, both before and after the Civil War, that such a state might wellinterfere with their complete subordination of their African-American workforce. Let usmake no mistake about it: "state's rights" was the anti-state ideology of both the

Republicans and Southern Democrats. Once their Civil War was over, and despite theirother differences on some issues, this ideology united them completely in opposing anygovernment program or agency that might have aided those who worked with theirhands in factories and fields. (For further historical background on why the capitalistclass is so powerful in the United States, see the discussion in thefinal section of the"Four Networks Theory of Power".)

Sisterhood or Class Politics?

Skocpol devotes four chapters and an appendix to the legislative and state-buildingefforts of women of the Progressive Era. She chronicles their success in (1) establishing

maximum hours for women in 41 states; (2) making it possible for counties in 40 statesto pay "mothers' pensions" to needy single mothers (usually widows) if they so desired;
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(3) creating a fact-finding Children's Bureau in the federal government in 1912; (4)passing minimum-wage laws for women in 15 states between 1913 and 1923; (5)creating a Women's Bureau in the federal government in 1920 to study women in theworkforce and their working conditions; and (6) forcing the federal government tospend $1.9 million a year between 1921 and 1926 for federally subsidized clinics that

gave pre-natal and post-natal health advice to mothers.

Skocpol attributes the success of these efforts to several factors. First, both "elite" and"middle class" women were willing to ignore class barriers and work with working classwomen (319, 324). Second, the elite and middle class women came together innationwide clubs and policy organizations that could adopt and disseminate a commonprogram, and then lobby effectively in many states at once. Third, the women madeexcellent use of magazines, books, forums, and media in influencing public opinion,which in turn influenced politicians. Fourth, the activist women used "moralistic" and"maternalistic" rhetoric in influencing male legislators and judges (368-369). Mostgenerally, there was an ideal organizational and ideological "fit" between the women's

movement and the government at that time, just the opposite of what obtained for malereformers (319, 531). The women could be active in many states at the same timebecause of their federal organizational structure, and their maternalist ideologyresonated with the values of the many legislators and judges who wanted to preserve thefamily and have women at home raising their children.

In regard to the organizational dimension of this movement, Skocpol's main focus is onthe General Federation of Women's Clubs (hereafter GFWC). The GFWC was foundedin 1890 to bring together local women's clubs. It had biennial conventions, published ajournal, maintained a national office, and held regular meetings of elected nationalofficers (320). Once the GFWC was established, there soon followed state federationslinked to it that also were socially and politically active. Skocpol notes that policyflowed from the top down in the GFWC (331). She raises an interesting possibilitywhen she claims that the women reformers and intellectuals--overwhelminglyunmarried, she emphasizes (342)--could work with the non-careerist married women inthe nationwide GFWC because they all shared "maternalist values" (354). Put morefrankly, they thought that the place for most women, and especially working-classwomen, was in the home, taking care of and socializing children.

Although the GFWC was the most general organizational base of the movement, it wasjoined on some issues by the Congress of Mothers, created in 1897 by the wife of a

Washington, D.C., lawyer and other "elite" women. This organization focused on the"ideal of educated motherhood," especially through work with public schools (333). Itlater evolved into the PTA and narrowed its focus to schools only. The other national-level organization working with the GFWC on many issues was the NationalConsumers' League, formed in the 1890s. Its leaders, according to Skocpol, wereprimarily "elite" women, along with a few male professors who rarely attendedmeetings (352).

As impressive as these women were in their abilities and organizational skills, theirpower was not as great as Skocpol implies and their successes were not as impressive asthey first appear, as I will document shortly. Nor does she consider the possibility that

some of these clubs and groups represent women of the upper class who were workingto reinforce the efforts made by their fathers, brothers, and husbands, rather than


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challenging them (Domhoff, 1970, pp. 44-54; Ostrander, 1984). Instead, she says thewomen in this movement had "unselfish" policy goals (319). They wanted to "protectchildren and mothers and at the same time address the inequities and inefficiencies of anindustrial and urban society" (314).

Skocpol does speak of upper-class women in relation to the settlement housemovement, the National Consumers' League, and a small pro-worker organizationknown as the Women's Trade Union League, but mostly she says these women were"elite women" or "highly educated career women." She discusses their educationalbackgrounds at length. They were from the Seven Sisters, by and large, which were wellknown as schools for upper-class women in the 19th century. She says the women inthese schools were taught that they were "superior" to other young women, which seemsto me to suggest class consciousness (343). At another point Skocpol notes that only 2%of the women between 18 and 21 years of age in 1880 were in college (341). Given thatsmall number, it is likely that the great majority were from the upper class. In my ownstudy of these issues, I found almost all of the top leaders in the movement came from

upper-class backgrounds (Domhoff, 1970, pp. 48-49). Many other studies come to thesame conclusion (Davis, 1967; Gordon, 1994, Chapter 4; Linn, 1935; Platt, 1969, pp.83-95; Williams, 1948).

Once their schooling was completed, the well-educated women of the upper classwanted roles in society that were commensurate with their class and educationalbackgrounds. It became difficult to teach them they were superior and members of aruling class, and then not let them share in ruling. Subsequent sociological studies showthat upper-class women did carve out a role for themselves in the power structure,primarily in the areas that concerned the women of the Progressive Era (Daniels, 1988;Kendall, 2002; Ostrander, 1980).

In her eagerness to portray the women of the Progressive Era as part of one bigmovement, Skocpol downplays or ignores the many differences among them, not just inclass and education, but in race and ethnicity as well. She talks as if women weresingle-mindedly gender conscious in their politics, overlooking their differences. As herfeminist critics point out, gender is not a single phenomenon unrelated to other socialcharacteristics (e.g., Mink, 1993, 1995; Scott, 1993).

There is one final difficulty with Skocpol's perspective on the women's movement thatmust be introduced before turning to an analysis of her case studies. She does not stress

enough that the three organizations she emphasizes--the National Congress of Mothers,the GFWC, and the National Consumers' League--were "quite different" in their politicsand membership despite their common maternalist orientation, as historian LindaGordon convincingly argues (1993, p. 150). They therefore should not be lumpedtogether too readily. The National Congress of Mothers, which Skocpol shows to be themost socially elite of the groups, had an exclusive focus on improving motherhood. Itsefforts to change child-rearing practices in the working class were endorsed by malepoliticians, including President Theodore Roosevelt (33). I therefore believe one of itsmain goals was to "Americanize" the new immigrants in the industrial working class,that is, to convey to them the standards and ideology of the traditional upper class. Itsmembers were conservative maternalists.


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The GFWC, on the other hand, was far more wide-ranging in its interests, and probablyhad more middle-class women in its leadership. Its views on general issues tended to bemainstream and conventional. The National Consumers' League, however, was a liberalmaternalist organization even though many of its women leaders had upper-classbackgrounds. I think its leaders were part of the nascent and struggling liberal-labor

coalition of the era. In fact, a great many of them lived long enough to becomeimportant members of the liberal-labor coalition during the New Deal (Chambers, 1963,pp. 254-257). This group also differed in that it had some male leadership. Perhaps themost telling evidence for placing the National Consumers' League in the liberal-laborcoalition is its support for reform legislation for men as well as women, whereas theother women's organizations focused exclusively on women and children. As one experton women in American history concludes, it had "far more radical goals than did thewomen's clubs," and "would have supported provision for all workers had they thoughtit politically feasible" (Scott, 1993, p. 778).

So, in the following analysis of Skocpol's case studies I am going to use the National

Congress of Mothers and the GFWC as indicators for acceptable upper-class views andthe National Consumers' League as emblematic of the liberal view on an issue. Thisdistinction makes it possible to determine if the two mainstream women's groups everline up with employers, leaving the National Consumers' League on its own.

The Maternalist Case Studies

Skocpol presents three case studies to show the influence of the maternalists. The firstconcerned industrial legislation (primarily maximum hours and minimum wages). Thesecond focused on mothers' pensions. The third discusses the creation of the Children'sBureau and its later program for advice-giving maternity clinics. The most successful ofthese reforms was a restriction on the number of hours women could work during a dayor week. Between 1874 and 1920, 41 states passed what were called maximum-hourlaws, most of which were enacted between 1916 and 1920. By way of contrast, the leastsuccessful concerned minimum wages, where only 15 states passed legislation creatingminimum-wage commissions between 1912 and 1923. Most of these successes were inlow-population Western states with little or no industry, and two or soon repealed.Moreover, minimum-wage legislation was declared unconstitutional by the SupremeCourt in 1923. The large differences in the success rates of the two types of legislationallow us to see what factors may be having the greatest influence on the passage ofthese laws.

First, it needs to be stressed that maximum-hours laws had far less potential impact onemployers than minimum-wage laws because they were not an expense to the employer.In other words, hours laws were regulatory in nature, simply limiting the total daily orweekly hours women could work, whereas minimum-wage laws were redistributive innature because in most cases employers would be required to pay women employeeshigher wages. Thus, the two types of laws were quite distinct. Hours laws did notnecessarily pose a threat to profit making (McCammon, 1995).

Second, male workers tended to be favorably disposed to maximum-hours laws forthree reasons. First, such laws fit with their patriarchal ideology about the weakness of

women and their need for protection. Second, such legislation could help to limitwomen as competitors with men for good jobs; for example, protective laws that kept


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women out of night work or allegedly dangerous jobs helped to monopolize the bestjobs for men. Third, unions saw such legislation as a precedent for gaining a similar lawfor men, a kind of thin entering wedge.

On the other hand, the AFL was bitterly opposed to minimum wages for anyone

because it feared minimum wages would in fact become the maximum. However, statefederations of labor sometimes favored such laws, so the situation varied from state tostate. For example, the state federations were supportive in Washington, Texas andMassachusetts, where the laws passed (412).

A third general factor to be considered is that there were male state officials whofavored maximum hours because they wanted mothers at home supervising theirchildren (377). They decided they could not enforce child labor laws unless women'sworking hours were cut back. Experts in bureaus of labor statistics and factoryinspectors were the leaders in this regard.

Fourth, the women's reform movement was not united in favor of both maximum hoursand minimum wages. Both the GFWC and the National Consumers' League were infavor of maximum-hours legislation, but the GFWC never endorsed passage ofminimum-wage legislation (414). As for the National Congress of Mothers, it "virtuallynever mentioned industrial regulations beyond the child labor laws that it stronglysupported" (382). Skocpol even presents some evidence that the national leaders of theNational Congress of Mothers may have opposed regulations for women workers (382).This means the liberal National Consumers' League was the only major national-levelorganization of women advocating minimum-wage commissions.

In the case of the GFWC, Skocpol follows her statement that it never endorsedminimum-wage legislation with the assurance that "the nationally assembledclubwomen did hear a discussion of the state-by-state movement for female minimumwages" on two different occasions, in 1912 and 1914 (414). Then, too, some statefederations did work in favor of the minimum-wage laws passed between 1913 and1915, but Skocpol concludes that "the state federations do not seem to have adopted thecause of minimum wages in many key states" (417).

Given the differing patterns of support and resistance concerning the two types oflegislation, perhaps it is understandable that far more states passed maximum-hourslegislation than created minimum-wage commissions. Sociologist Holly McCammon's

(1995) quantitative study of the many factors possibly accounting for the success andfailure of these legislative campaigns provides support for the importance of both thewomen's groups and the employers. Using a method called event history analysis,making it possible to assess the influence of time-varying independent variables, shefound that maximum hours laws were likely to pass in states where women's reformgroups were organized and gubernatorial elections were competitive, but states withlarge employers were less likely to have such laws (McCammon 1995:231).

When it came to minimum-wage laws, however, the presence of the women's groupsshowed no independent effects in McCammon's analysis. The combination of theNational Consumers' League and the presence of the Progressive party, along with the

right to vote for women, were the explanatory factors in the few states where these lawsdid pass. Employer resistance seemed to be the important factor in explaining why


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minimum-wage laws did not pass (McCammon, 1995, p. 234). Such factors as thedegree of unionization, presence of a state labor bureau, and the nature of recentSupreme Court decisions had no effect on the passage of either type of legislation. AsMcCammon (1995, p. 239) concludes, "The crucial factor for success for the genderedmovement was a minimum of employer resistance, and employer opposition was at a

minimum when the workplace reforms demanded by the reform groups did not threatenprofit making." These findings support a class analysis over Skocpol's polity-centeredanalysis.,

We can understand the power dimension of these laws even better if we consider thesubstance of what they entailed. Did they enact the eight-hour day and living wage thereformers desired? Did they have significant sanctions for violations of them? Werethey enforced? In the case of the maximum-hours legislation, the strength of the lawswas not impressive. Domestic and agricultural workers were excluded, as were officeworkers. Only six states limited work to eight-hour days and forty-eight-hour weeks.Another nine set nine hours a day and fifty-four hours a week as the maximum. Ten-

hour days and sixty-hour weeks were the standard in most states (Kessler-Harris, 1982,p. 188).

Moreover, these limits were easily evaded by employers when necessary through avariety of tactics, such as not counting the time the women workers spent in cleaning orrepairing their machinery. Most women workers felt they had to go along with thesesubterfuges for fear of losing their jobs. There also were numerous exceptions built intothe laws for employers with special needs (Kessler-Harris, 1982, p. 188). Althoughthere is evidence that these laws helped many women, there is little or no evidence thatthey were onerous for employers. Employers simply evaded the laws or added moreworkers in an era when this was not a burden because there were no social securitytaxes or health benefits to pay.

As for the minimum-wage commissions, they were not very impressive either. Forexample, in Massachusetts, the one major industrial state with minimum-wagelegislation, there were in fact huge holes in the law. The minimum-wage commissionwas supposed to determine living wages for women and minors, but it set up panels foreach industry that recommended widely different levels, and new hearings wereconstantly needed to consider increases in the face of inflation. Worse, employers couldwin an exemption if they could prove they would not be able to make a profit if theypaid the minimum wage. Most striking of all for the modern reader, the only penalty for

noncompliance was adverse publicity, namely, "publishing the names of employers whodid not comply" (Kessler-Harris, 1982, p. 196).

Whatever way we slice it, maximum hours and minimum wages are not impressiveachievements if their enactment is used as an indicator of power. Employers were rarelyrestricted by them; their power was not challenged.

Mothers' Pensions

Mothers' pensions, mostly for widowed mothers of children under the age of 16, butoccasionally for deserted or divorced women, were the second major success after

maximum hours for the reform movement. Laws permitting counties to pay suchpensions passed in virtually every state outside the South between 1911 and 1920. The


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campaign was spearheaded by the National Congress of Mothers. The GFWCwholeheartedly supported the effort, as did the National Consumers' League and otherwomen's organizations.

However, there is no solid evidence that the women's groups had any impact on state

legislatures. As historian Paula Baker (1993, p. 460) points out in a devastating reviewof Skocpol's book, "her evidence consists of resolutions passed at annual meetings."Moreover, Baker notes that "almost half of the state federations of women's clubs failedto pass resolutions in favor of mothers' pensions bills" and that "most states passed thisprogram without the benefit of resolutions from state chapters of the National Congressof Mothers (Baker, 1993, p. 460).

Moreover, there was little or no opposition to this policy innovation from employers.Skocpol makes this critical point rather obliquely: "Opposition from business, and fromeconomically conservative forces generally, may have been less of a factor in the caseof mothers' pensions than it was for hour and minimum-wage laws" (425). Nor was

there opposition from any other male group. In fact, the movement for mothers'pensions originated with male juvenile court judges in Missouri, Illinois, and Colorado,who were concerned about both juvenile delinquency and the institutionalization ofteenagers from mother-only families (Lubove, 1968, pp. 97ff.). The idea then wasadopted by the National Congress of Mothers and carried to fruition. The opposition tomothers' pensions came from the established private charitable groups, who vigorouslyfought government involvement in welfare in the name of voluntarism. The leadershipof this opposition was centered in New York at the Charity Organization Society andthe Russell Sage Foundation. This opposition included both men and women.

The reform movement won out over the voluntarist opposition with a fair amount ofease. The new law turned out to be a relatively easy one for most state legislators toaccept because it primarily involved giving permission to pay such pensions; only 25percent of the states agreed to help counties with the funding (Lubove, 1968, p. 99).Moreover, relatively few counties across the nation took advantage of the opportunityprovided by the law, and payments were invariably meager in those that did (472). Forexample, only 45,800 mothers were funded in 1921 and 93,600 in 1931 (466).

Nor was acceptance into the program automatic for those who were eligible. Themothers had to prove to inquiring social workers that they were fit mothers who wereproviding a good home and moral atmosphere for their children (465-470). Although

immigrants made up less than one-third of Chicago's population in 1920, "theyaccounted for more than two-thirds of mothers' pension beneficiaries," which suggeststhat these pensions were another way the National Congress of Mothers and its alliestried to Americanize the new industrial working class (Mink 1995, p. 31). Skocpol(479) rejects this kind of analysis, saying we should take these upper-class women at"their word" when they say they were "honoring motherhood," but readers shouldponder the analysis and evidence in Mink (1995, Chapter 2) before they do so.

The Children's Bureau and Maternity Clinics

The Children's Bureau came into being in 1912 as the culmination of an eight-year

legislative effort. It was supported by all the female reform groups. According toSkocpol, its main opponents were "legislators fearful of child labor reforms" (484); one


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of the early reformers tells us these legislators represented southern mill owners whoclaimed child labor laws were the work of Yankee agitators trying to kill new industrialrivals in the South (Costin, 1983, pp. 102-103). But there seems to have been noorganized employer opposition to the idea in the North. The main function of the bureauwas to carry out studies relating to infants and children, and to issue reports. Within a

few years it also was administering programs. The most important of these programsprovided advice through maternity clinics set up in cooperation with the states.

The bill creating the maternity clinics in 1921 was supported by the GFWC, NationalCongress of Mothers, and National Consumers' League, but also by charity groups,churches, unions, and the women's committees of both major political parties. Inaddition, many legislators were afraid to oppose the bill because they did not know ifrecently enfranchised women were going to vote as a bloc or start their own politicalparty (505). The opponents of the program were anti-suffragist groups, defenders ofstates' rights, some medical groups at the local or state level, and "forces trying toprotect the bureaucratic prerogatives of the Public Health Service" (500). There is no

suggestion of any employer opposition. Under the circumstances, the opponents wereno match for the reform movement, and a bill passed calling for $1.9 million a year infunding for five years. The program was carried out by public health nurses and womenphysicians.

By the time the clinics came up for renewal, the circumstances were different and theyhad acquired an implacable enemy besides, the American Medical Association, whichsaw them as competition and as a possible precedent for "socialized medicine." Nolonger fearful that women would desert the two major parties or punish legislators whovoted against women's issues, and facing a women's movement now less militant andunited, a minority of ultraconservative senators filibustered against the bill. They forcedthe reform movement to settle for a two-year renewal in the vain hope that the nextCongress would be more responsive. At the same time the women activists beganmaking fallback plans for states to sponsor the program. Most states continued to fundat least some of it, but there were severe cutbacks when the Great Depression began.The functions of the program were taken over by private physicians and the PublicHealth Service.

Summary of the Cases

At the outset of her discussion of the women's movement, Skocpol asks the following

question: "Why did such maternalist measures succeed during the Progressive Era, evenas the first efforts to launch a paternalist American welfare state came to naught?"(317). She says the answer "lies in the heights of social organization, ideological selfconsciousness and political mobilization achieved by American middle-class womenaround the turn of the twentieth century" (318). Based on the pattern of success andfailure on the five main issues discussed by Skocpol, I suggest a very different answer:the solidarity and power of the dominant class, male and female, was determinative.

Employers were highly resistant as a group to only one of these issues, minimumwages, as Skocpol agrees (411, 417). This was precisely the issue that the NationalCongress of Mothers avoided, and on which the GFWC did not make a national

endorsement. Even at the state level, Skocpol agrees that the state federations ofwomen's clubs reported "much more involvement" in maximum-hours laws and


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mothers' pensions "than in the campaign for minimum wages for women" (417). Thisadds up to class solidarity. The fact that the minimum-wage campaign organized by theliberal National Consumers' League was the least successful of the five efforts istherefore supportive of the class dominance view, especially when it is added thatemployers put up little or no resistance on the other issues. When the employers were

neutral and the National Congress of Women or GFWC supportive, then the programwon. When the employers were adamantly opposed, then the program lost, which, asshown in an earlier section of this critique, is exactly what happened on the male socialinsurance issues.

Skocpol seems to come to a very similar conclusion at the end of her overview chapteron the various women's groups. There she says that the reformers succeeded when they"seemed to be asking for forms of help for children and mothers that would notapparently severely disadvantage established political, business or labor interests" (372).This is a very different answer from the one she provides at the start of the samechapter, where the victories are credited solely to the "social organization" and "political

mobilization" of "middle-class" women (318). From where I sit, the efforts bymainstream middle-class and upper-class women are part of the equation, but theindifference or disinterest of employers as a class is essential, too.

Even where the employers were not an organized stumbling block, however, we shouldnot exaggerate the strength and accomplishments of these programs. The maximumhours were often evaded, the mothers' pensions were small and rarely offered, and theadvice-giving maternity clinics did not last very long. I do not think this overall recordis one on which a polity-centered or pluralistic theory can be built.

Where Do Skocpol's Case Studies Lead?

Given all the enthusiasm that Skocpol puts into writing about Civil War pensions andmaternalist policies, it is surprising how irrelevant they turn out to be in terms ofunderstanding the main features of the American welfare state. It is as if she chose twomeandering paths that dry up in the middle of a desert--a desert known as the 1920s.These paths lead nowhere in terms of later developments, at least nowhere verypositive. In 1980 Skocpol said she was going to help us understand the New Deal, andin the Preface of this book she reaffirms that this was her original goal for the book, butneither of her two favorite case studies comes close to explaining anything major aboutlater welfare legislation.

As we have already seen, the most important case she can make for the role of the CivilWar pensions is that they "delayed" the welfare state through their allegedly badexample. Even if we accept this as a partial explanation, it doesn't tell us about the pathsthat did lead to the main provisions of the Social Security Act. For that we have to turnto historian William Graebner (1980), sociologist Jill Quadagno (1988), and myarchival research (1996, Chapter 5). These sources show that the key programs thatwere adopted in 1935 were ones that (1) had been devised by corporate-oriented expertsat Industrial Relations Counselors, Inc., and the Social Sciences Research Council; (2)were supported by such large Northern industrial firms as Standard Oil of New Jerseyand General Electric; and (3) were acceptable to Southern Democratic plantation

owners once their own labor force of agricultural, seasonal, and domestic workers wasexcluded from coverage.


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Turning to the maternalist policies that "managed to survive the Progressive Era," to useSkocpol's own phrase, she claims they were "reworked in unforeseen ways" (320).Indeed, she admits that they became "subordinate and marginal parts of nationwidesocial provision in the United States" (320). Furthermore, the Children's Bureau lostmost of its influence after 1927. During the New Deal mothers' pensions were taken

from it and lodged in the male-oriented Social Security Board, where they suffered the"unfortunate unintended consequence" of becoming "demeaning and ungenerous'welfare' for the poor alone" (536). Based on Mink's (1995) subtle analysis of howmaternalist assumptions are in part responsible for the way mothers' pension becamestigmatized as "welfare," I question Skocpol's uncritical stance toward maternalistpolitics.

But even if we overlook her uncritical stance, it is difficult to understand why we shouldstudy maternalist policies if they were marginal to the overall Social Security programand if the goal is to understand the major features of the American welfare state. I agreethat many of the women leaders of the Progressive Era are fully worthy of honor and

respect, and I paid mine to them in an essay on the feminine half of the upper class(Domhoff, 1970, Chapter 2). Their stories should be told, as they have been by manyhistorians, female and male. But they need not be told uncritically and without a classdimension.

To demonstrate the class-bound nature of the women's efforts, consider the followingrecapitulation of the evidence concerning their stance toward various welfare policies.First, the GFWC never supported old-age pensions or other benefits for men that werefiercely opposed by most businessmen; they focused almost exclusively on women. Afew famous women reformers supported male programs, but in general most women ofthe Progressive Era kept out of such issues. Second, and even more telling, the GFWCnever endorsed the liberal women's campaign for minimum wages for women, anotherissue strongly opposed by corporate leaders (414). Third, elite male politicians endorsedthe work of the Congress of Mothers in trying to change child-rearing practices in theworking class (337). Fourth, none of the successful policies advocated by elite women'sgroups--maximum hours for women, mothers' pensions, a Children's Bureau, andsubsidies for maternity education clinics--was deeply opposed by leading maleindustrialists in any organized way. When we add all this up, I think we see a pattern ofclass solidarity: there was no visible male/female split on old-age pensions or minimumwages for women, both of which failed, and there was male acceptance of the elitewomen's reform programs for women and children, all of which passed in some form.

Only Skocpol's chapters on the failed male reform efforts of the Progressive Era haveany plausible direct tie to the major features of the Social Security Act. Here Skocpolrepeats her usual claim that the failure of the reformers forced them into alteredprograms at the state level, one of which, that in Wisconsin, had an influence on theSocial Security Act (534). While I agree that experts from Wisconsin played a largestaffing role in the creation of the Social Security Act, I nonetheless agree with the keyWisconsinites themselves when they say that the major ideas came from elsewhere(Altmeyer, 1968; Witte, 1963). Even on the issue where they had the most influence,keeping unemployment insurance more of a state-level plan, I think the real clout wasdelivered by the Southern Democrats, who feared any federal programs that might

jeopardize their complete control of their low-wage African-American workforce(Domhoff, 1996, pp. 171-174).


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Conclusion

From a class-dominance perspective, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers is not a veryuseful book. It is descriptively accurate on the topics it deals with, but its explanationsof events are inadequate because Skocpol does not consider the role of the corporate

community and the upper class. Even on one of her main topics, the nature of thepolitical parties and the legislative process, she makes no effort to come to grips withthe ability of the corporate community to shape both of the major political partiesthrough campaign finance, and to lobby Congress through access, expertise, and gifts.Nor is there even a mention of the really serious "state-building" accomplished in theProgressive Era by the corporate community, such as the Federal Reserve System, theFederal Trade Commission, and the Bureau of the Budget.

Skocpol and other state autonomy theorists insist they made a contribution by arguingthat the state is not reducible to class logic, but as this book signaled, they are no longerprepared to talk about state autonomy in the American case, and for good reason.

Instead, they simply insist that institutions matter, as do political parties, experts, andgovernment officials. They have declared victory and assimilated into the diverse ranksof historical institutionalism, where they are part of the pluralist wing (e.g., Finegold &Skocpol, 1995, p. 312, footnote 3; Orloff, 1993, pp. 41-42; Skocpol, 1992, p. 569).

But how much do parties and government officials matter in the United States when itcomes to analyzing the driving dynamics of the power structure? In a country that isbest understood in terms of class-based economic power for well-known historicalreasons, and in which any emphasis on classes or class conflict is frowned upon, it doesnot seem helpful to subordinate corporate power and class conflict into a more general--institutional--framework. State autonomy theory has been transformed, denatured, andthen cast aside in little more than two decades since its initial flowering, replaced onceagain by a form of pluralism. However, the reluctance to embrace a class-based analysisof power in America is still very much with us.

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