Women, Progressive-Era Reform, and Scientific Management

• Author: Hindy Lauer Schachter
• Published date: 01 November 2002
• DOI: 10.1177/009539902237276
• Date: 01 November 2002
• Subject Matter: Articles

ADMINISTRATION
Schachter / WOMEN & SOCIETY
AND
/ November 2002
PROGRESSIVE-ERA REFORM
Questions have been raised about the relation of Progressive-Era women reformers to scien-
tific management and the efficiency concept associated with it. This article brings evidence
from organizations such as the National Consumers League and the Taylor Society to argue
that in the Progressive Era female reformers belonged to a community of discourse close to
scientific management. Understanding this relationship helps delineate the intellectual
foundations of progressive reform.
WOMEN, PROGRESSIVE-ERA REFORM,
AND SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT
HINDY LAUER SCHACHTER
New Jersey Institute of Technology
In the last 20 years many disciplines have tried to enlarge their under-
standing of their origins by exploring the traditionally neglected role of
women in their development (e.g., Scott, 1988; Silverberg, 1998). As part
of this trend, public administration scholars have analyzed some
underpublicized contributions of women to their field (e.g., Guy, 2000;
Rubin, 1990).
The early years of the 20th century are an important locus for this
reevaluation because they constitute a time when the administrative state
expanded and public administration emerged as an area of study (Waldo,
1948). The break-up of the Victorian gender systemoffered women new
opportunities for education and work. As many traditional institutions
were still closed to female participation, women contributed by joining
new institutions and movements. Even before they achieved the right to
vote they used voluntary associations to work for an expanded state pres-
ence in social issues. Settlement houses became important venues for
female action to promote government interest in the poor (e.g., Stillman,
1998, pp. 81-97). The General Federation of Women’s Clubs figured cen-
trally in state enactment of mothers’ pensions as well as early labor legis-
lation (Skocpol, 1992; Skocpol et. al., 1993).
ADMINISTRATION & SOCIETY, Vol. 34 No. 5, November 2002 563-578
DOI: 10.1177/009539902237276
© 2002 Sage Publications
563

---

564
ADMINISTRATION & SOCIETY / November 2002
The importance of women in the expansion of the administrative state
is clear. Questions remain, however, about the intellectual affiliations of
female reformers. One question is the relation of women reformers, par-
ticularly settlement women, to scientific management and the efficiency
concept associated with it. For men, scientific management and the quest
for efficiency undergirded early 20th-century urban reformand public
administration (e.g., Schiesl, 1977), but no scholarly consensus exists on
the relation of female reformers to scientific management and efficiency.
Stivers (1995, 2000) contrasted the settlement women’s concern for
political substance with what she sees as the male reformer’s concern with
creating a science of efficient organizations. Her analysis posited “clear
differences in values” (2000, p. 16) between settlement leaders and male-
led reform organizations that were affiliated with scientific management
(e.g., the New York Bureau of Municipal Research [BMR]), with female
reformers, by and large, not attracted to the efficiency movement.
Oldenziel (2000) argued, on the other hand, that in America women
reformers relied even more heavily than their male counterparts on the
ideology of scientific management. They hoped the authority of science
would curtail the arbitrary nature of the existing system. Taylor-inspired
work analysis was an important weapon in their arsenal for equity and jus-
tice. This view would accord with Davis’s (1967, pp. 185-186) conclusion
that BMR and settlement leaders were kindred spirits.
Miller and Coghill (1964) divided early 20th-century industrial
reformers into welfarists, who started with a concern for individuals, and
technicists, who proceeded froma concern for the internal efficiency of
organizations. Although positing two camps accords with Stivers’
assumption of a divide in reform ranks, Miller and Coghill argued that
women played an important role in both camps. (They place Florence
Kelley and Lillian Wald among the welfarists and Lillian Gilbreth and
Josephine Goldmark among the technicists.)
Given the key role of women in pressing for social legislation, resolv-
ing the relationship of reform women to scientific management should
help scholars understand the intellectual origins of the administrative
state. It will also shed light on the historical nature of scientific manage-
ment itself. A picture of scientific management as a narrow, technocratic
paradigm is common in the public administration literature, although a
number of writers have argued that the ideas underlying Frederick Tay-
lor’s (1947a, 1947b) shop management served as a vehicle for social
change in the Progressive Era (e.g., Meiksins, 1984; Nyland, 1989;
Schachter, 1989). An analysis that dichotomizes settlement women and

---

Schachter / WOMEN AND PROGRESSIVE-ERA REFORM
565
efficiency men lends credence to a narrow picture of scientific manage-
ment. A less dichotomized picture of the scientific-management and set-
tlement movements, one in which settlement women use scientific man-
agement methodologies and publish in the same venues as Taylor-
affiliated reformers, supports a different picture.
The argument of this article is that settlement women belonged to a
community of discourse close to scientific management. As part of this
community they championed rational investigation of work routines, the
use of expertise to solve social problems and institutionalize government
services for the poor, and the importance of efficiency—understood as
maximum use of all administrative resources (Schiesl, 1977).
Three types of evidence are brought to support these assertions. The
first section of the article outlines commonalities between the BMR and
the settlement movement to show that the leaders of an urban reform orga-
nization allied with shop management shared backgrounds, publication
outlets, and appeals to efficiency with settlement leaders. The second dis-
cusses the uses of scientific management in the National Consumers’
League (NCL) under Florence Kelley, a settlement leader. The third sec-
tion explores the role of settlement-background women in the Taylor
Society after 1915. The narrative identifies why such women believed an
organization dedicated to scientific management was the place for
expanding the role of the state in attacking social problems. Two final sec-
tions analyze the evidence that reform women belonged to a community
of discourse close to scientific management and offer conclusions.
THE BMR AND THE SETTLEMENT MOVEMENT
The New York BMR was the first organization to use Frederick Tay-
lor’s shop-management insights to analyze urban problems. From its cre-
ation in 1906 until its reorganization in 1914 its executive was a three-
person directorate composed of William Allen, Henry Bruere, and Freder-
ick Cleveland. (For a history of the bureau, see Dahlberg, 1966.)
Both Allen and Bruere had social work backgrounds, with Bruere, in
particular, having had rich associations with settlement work. From 1903-
1905 Allen had been general agent for the New York Association for
Improving the Condition of the Poor (AICP), an organization that pres-
sured the state to assume new obligations to poor people. Henry Bruere
lived at Boston’s Denison Settlement House until 1903, when he went to
Chicago to work with Jane Addams in establishing the McCormick Work

---

566
ADMINISTRATION & SOCIETY / November 2002
Men’s Club. When Bruere came to New York in 1905, Robert Hunter,
head resident of the University Settlement, introduced him to Allen
(Davis, 1967). Through this introduction Bruere became director of the
Bureau of City Betterment, a temporary precursor of the BMR.
Given Allen and Bruere’s backgrounds, it is not surprising that in the
decade after 1905-1906, bureau and settlement workers wrote for the same
publications (Schachter, 1997), including Charities and the Commons, a
social work periodical.1 Its publication committee included Jane Addams
and Frank Tucker, a former colleague of Allen’s at the AICP and vice
chairman of the BMR’s founding board of trustees (Davis, 1967, p. 185);
Florence Kelley served as a department editor. Annals of the American
Academy of Political and Social Science was another outlet for bureau and
settlement leaders. For this journal both Allen (1911) and Lillian Wald
(1905b) wrote articles on the need to improve...