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Civic Engagement

Name: Civic Engagement
Author: John Louis Recchiuti
ISBN: 9780812239577

Social Science and Progressive-Era Reform in New York City

John Louis Recchiuti

University of Pennsylvania Press

328 Pages, 6.00 × 9.00 in, 29 illus.

Hardcover
9780812239577
Published: 2006-10-20

$85.00

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Description
Contents
Authors
Praise

John Recchiuti recounts the history of a vibrant network of young American scholars and social activists who helped transform a city and a nation. New York, in the late Gilded Age and Progressive Era, was the nation's financial capital, its principal hub for immigration, and its premier center for the arts. It was also a center of civic engagement: most of the nation's main reform organizations were headquartered there. As public intellectuals, members of the city's social science network championed the fight for civil rights through the NAACP and National Urban League; sought solutions to labor problems through the American Association for Labor Legislation, National Consumers' League, and National Child Labor Committee; founded the nation's first settlement houses; and established the first center for social science and social work, the New York School of Philanthropy.

In New York, which one group of social scientists called "the greatest social science laboratory in the world," these men and women lived and worked in Greenwich Village's working-class haunts, amid immigrant poverty on the Lower East Side, and on Columbia University's Upper West Side campus. They debated how much government should regulate laissez-faire capitalism, whether poverty was caused by individual character flaws, and how, through the New York Bureau of Municipal Research, to thwart municipal corruption. Some promulgated a racist eugenics, while others fought racism in the name of social science. And, in their reach for leadership, they confronted an essential question: was social science to be the herald of a reinvigorated democracy, or an instrument of technocracy?

In this deeply researched study, Recchiuti focuses on more than a score of Progressive reformers, including Florence Kelley, W. E. B. Du Bois, E. R. A. Seligman, Charles Beard, Franz Boaz, Frances Perkins, Samuel Lindsay, Edward Devine, Mary Simkhovitch, and George Edmund Haynes. He reminds us how people from markedly diverse backgrounds forged a movement to change a city and, beyond it, a nation.

Introduction

1 COMPETING GOSPELS: "MAKE WAY FOR SCIENCE AND FOR LIGHT!"
"From the Study of Nature to the Knowledge of themselves"
"Christian Sociology," "a new spirit" for social science, or "a species of venerable quackery"?
The dilemma of "expert intelligence" in a democratic society
"Expert intelligence": Leaders or public servants?
Who was "progressive" and what was "regression"? An academic quarrel
The limits of dissent: Trustees and faculty

2 FROM NOBLESSE OBLIGE TO SOCIAL REFORM IN THE "NEW PHILANTHROPY" OF "SCIENTIFIC CHARITY"
Toward a "science" of "dealing with the poor": "Mrs. Lowell's Society"
The "deserving" and the undeserving poor
"The New Philanthropy" with "the rank of a science"
The first school of applied social science: The New York School of Philanthropy
"The sensational story of industrial Pittsburgh": Social science and social change

3 SOCIAL SETTLEMENTS AS NEIGHBORHOOD DEMOCRACY OR AS BENEVOLENT PATERNALISM?
"In daily personal contact with working people"
"Responsible self-government," "associating...as equals" in a "New and Perfect City"
The "social experiment" of Henry Street, and Greenwich House's "passionate attempt to realize democracy"
Settlements as "Laboratories in Social Science"; "A scientific attitude of mind"
Women scholar-activists: Frances Kellor's "new sociology" and suffrage
Democracy "only upon paper"?: The continuing dilemma of benevolent paternalism

4 "A SCIENCE OF MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT": "SCIENTIFIC TRAINING" OR "AGENTS OF WALL STREET"?
"An era of constructive municipal undertakings"
The Bureau of Municipal Research versus Tammany Hall: "Intelligent control"
"Bureau of Municipal Besmirch" versus Tammany: Applying scientific methods to government
"No more important laboratory for the science of administration": Schools Collaborate
Another Realm: "Women's historic function...along the line of cleanliness..."
Limits of Research: Social Scientists as "white slaves of philanthropy"?
"The only kind of an expert that democracy will and ought to tolerate"

5 "TO LOOK AFTER THE NATION'S CROP OF CHILDREN"
"Clearly a Duty of the Federal Government": A Children's Bureau based on "absolutely scientific work"
Scholar and "Impatient Crusader": Florence Kelley and the National Consumers' League
"Sociological jurisprudence": Kelley, the Goldmark Sisters, and the "Brandeis brief"
Frances Perkins: "I'd much rather get a law than organize a union"
"Effective child labor law efficiently enforced"
Mothers' pensions: A "right and not as the dole"
Federal Child Labor Law: "The evil of premature and excessive child labor"

6 "SELF-CONSTITUTED LEADERS OR 'TEACHERS' WHOSE PRINCIPAL AIM IS DOMINATION"?: SOCIAL SCIENCE, ORGANIZED LABOR, AND SOCIAL INSURANCE LEGISLATION
"Life material...upon which these professional social workers experiment"
Voluntarism: Self-determination or "reactionary" self-interest?
"Erratic college professors," "on the ragged edge of socialism"
"A laboratory" of "scientific" legislative drafting
The first success: Ending phosphorous poisoning
"A pride in the enactment": Employer liability and workmen's compensation
The Triangle fire: Safer working conditions, a minimum wage, and the adversaries of both
"What next?": Government aid for the elderly, unemployed, and ill

7 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND "THE NEGRO PROBLEM": FROM "NORDIC MYTH" TO THE NAACP AND NATIONAL URBAN LEAGUE
Eugenics and the "science" of racism
Harvard and Columbia's first African-American Ph.D.s, in "the great social laboratory of New York City": Du Bois and Haynes
Mary White Ovington and the "Call"
"From the standpoint of modern science, are Negroes men?": Founding of the NAACP
"A union" of "opposition" to "the forces of evil": The NAACP
"Equal opportunity...conditioned by character only": The National Urban League
Why two organizations? Dividing the mission

8 "OUR IDEAS WILL BECOME COMMON CURRENCY": SOCIAL SCIENCE POLITICAL ENGAGEMENT IN THE ELECTION OF 1912 AND ITS AFTERMATH
"Political and sociological experts" in "the stern arena of political action"
The 23 Standards of the "Social Science Platform"
Roosevelt and "the best people"
Progressivism or betrayal? Race and the Progressive party
"Women in Political Bondage: Vote the Progressive Ticket to Make Us Free"
Who was "truly a progressive"? Social scientists on all sides in the election
"Defined by scientific laws and . . . manned by experts"

Epilogue
Appendix
Notes
Index
Acknowledgments

Civic Engagement

Social Science and Progressive-Era Reform in New York City

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