History & Classics
Protecting the Fairer Sex: Working Women, Protective Legislation, and Its Limits in Progressive Era Indiana
Document Type
Oral Presentation
Location
Indianapolis, IN
Subject Area
History & Classics
Start Date
11-4-2014 1:15 PM
End Date
11-4-2014 2:45 PM
Sponsor
Vivian Deno (Butler University)
Description
Starting in the early 1900's, industrialization shifted the family dynamic for millions of Americans across the country by shifting women out of the home and into the public sphere of the workforce. There was an exponential increase of working women and by 1910 nearly 156,000 women were working in Indiana.[1] However, society's opinion of working women remained largely negative and they were characterized as "plentiful in supply, limited in occupational choice, concentrated at the bottom rungs of the industrial ladder, and often intermittently employed."[2] An influx of women workers prompted several surrounding states, such as Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin, to enact protective legislation for their women ranging from a 10-hour workday to a 55-hour workweek.[3] These laws stemmed from the landmark 1908 Supreme Court case of Muller v. Oregon, the first to uphold protective legislation. The state of Oregon's brief, written by legendary attorney Louis Brandeis, argued, "Women's ill health and drudgery in a factory may affect her progeny in a way that the statistician cannot estimate."[4] Utilizing sociological jurisprudence, a consideration of the social consequences without such legislation, Brandeis successfully convinced the Supreme Court that women were inherently weaker due to a biological difference between the sexes, and thus as mothers of the race they needed protection from the ills of industrialization. Over the next decade, the Muller decision documented the legality of protective legislation and allowed states to enact laws that would protect their women workers.
Utilizing labor commissions to examine the conditions of working women, numerous states used the information they gathered to pass protective legislation. To an observer, it appeared that the Commission on Working Women created by Indiana's Governor Ralston in 1913 would place Indiana on the path to protective legislation like so many other states at the time. Surprisingly, the chairman of the Commission reported after the hearings that they have "not found any prevailing conditions that would seem to justify any radical legislation."[5] It is at this moment of curious failure, that my project, "Protecting the Fairer Sex: Working Women, Protective Legislation, and Its Limits in Progressive Era Indiana" analyzes this legislative breakdown.
[1]: Thirteenth Census of the United States, 1919. Vol.4. Population. Occupation Statistics, pp. 48-49.
[2]: Nancy Woloch, Muller v. Oregon: A Brief History with Documents, (Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 1996), 5.
[3]: Indiana Working Women Commission Report, Indiana Historical Society, Indianapolis, 602.
[4]: Ibid., 30
[5]: Indiana Working Women Commission Report, Indiana Historical Society, Indianapolis, 12.
Protecting the Fairer Sex: Working Women, Protective Legislation, and Its Limits in Progressive Era Indiana
Indianapolis, IN
Starting in the early 1900's, industrialization shifted the family dynamic for millions of Americans across the country by shifting women out of the home and into the public sphere of the workforce. There was an exponential increase of working women and by 1910 nearly 156,000 women were working in Indiana.[1] However, society's opinion of working women remained largely negative and they were characterized as "plentiful in supply, limited in occupational choice, concentrated at the bottom rungs of the industrial ladder, and often intermittently employed."[2] An influx of women workers prompted several surrounding states, such as Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin, to enact protective legislation for their women ranging from a 10-hour workday to a 55-hour workweek.[3] These laws stemmed from the landmark 1908 Supreme Court case of Muller v. Oregon, the first to uphold protective legislation. The state of Oregon's brief, written by legendary attorney Louis Brandeis, argued, "Women's ill health and drudgery in a factory may affect her progeny in a way that the statistician cannot estimate."[4] Utilizing sociological jurisprudence, a consideration of the social consequences without such legislation, Brandeis successfully convinced the Supreme Court that women were inherently weaker due to a biological difference between the sexes, and thus as mothers of the race they needed protection from the ills of industrialization. Over the next decade, the Muller decision documented the legality of protective legislation and allowed states to enact laws that would protect their women workers.
Utilizing labor commissions to examine the conditions of working women, numerous states used the information they gathered to pass protective legislation. To an observer, it appeared that the Commission on Working Women created by Indiana's Governor Ralston in 1913 would place Indiana on the path to protective legislation like so many other states at the time. Surprisingly, the chairman of the Commission reported after the hearings that they have "not found any prevailing conditions that would seem to justify any radical legislation."[5] It is at this moment of curious failure, that my project, "Protecting the Fairer Sex: Working Women, Protective Legislation, and Its Limits in Progressive Era Indiana" analyzes this legislative breakdown.
[1]: Thirteenth Census of the United States, 1919. Vol.4. Population. Occupation Statistics, pp. 48-49.
[2]: Nancy Woloch, Muller v. Oregon: A Brief History with Documents, (Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 1996), 5.
[3]: Indiana Working Women Commission Report, Indiana Historical Society, Indianapolis, 602.
[4]: Ibid., 30
[5]: Indiana Working Women Commission Report, Indiana Historical Society, Indianapolis, 12.