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The Political Economy of Minneapolis

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Women's Work and Politics in WWI America

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Abstract

This chapter contextualizes “the garment giant” in Minneapolis in the political economy of Minnesota. The main focus is on the westward expansion of industrial capitalism, where “far-sighted” and “determined” men from New England invested and “had visions of utilizing” the increasing number of women who made up “an idle labor supply” in the growing industrial center in the Upper Midwest. Since the historiography of Minneapolis has focused on men, the book is essential in adding women’s work to male activities in the city. Organized capital, organized labor, and the state labor politics are highlighted, especially regarding the protection of children and women in industrial work. The analysis of women’s struggle for the eight-hour working day and decent wages is based on pioneering research.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Charles Rumford Walker, American City: A Rank and File History of Minneapolis, Minneapolis, 2005 (1937), p. 5.

  2. 2.

    Ronald Abler, John S. Adams, John R. Borchert, St. Paul—Minneapolis: The Twin Cities, Cambridge, 1976, p. 11.

  3. 3.

    Walker, 2005, p. 9.

  4. 4.

    Hartsough, 1925, pp. 51, 54.

  5. 5.

    Hartsough, 1925, pp. 64–70. In 1922, there were 530 miles of track and 1021 street cars. See www.wapedia, Twin City Rapid Transit Company.

  6. 6.

    Tolg, 1923, Introduction.

  7. 7.

    Calvin F. Schmid, Social Saga of Two Cities: An Ecological and Statistical Study of Social Trends in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minneapolis, 1937, p. 43.

  8. 8.

    Hartsough, 1925, pp. 124ff.

  9. 9.

    Walker, 2005, p. 4.

  10. 10.

    Hartsough, 1925, p. 57.

  11. 11.

    List and schedules of Public and Social Agencies, p. 197. Survey 1919, Vol. 3, Minneapolis Young Women’s Christian Association Archives, Box 10, Social Welfare History Archive, University of Minnesota .

  12. 12.

    Månsson, Evelina, Amerikaminnen: Upplevelser och iakttagelser från en 6-årig vistelse i U.S.A. Hvetlanda, 1930, p. 31.

  13. 13.

    Millikan, 2001, pp. 163f.

  14. 14.

    Walker, 2005, p. 34; Tolg, 1923, Introduction.

  15. 15.

    William B. Taylor, The Labor Market for the Northwest, A Study Based Chiefly upon the Records of Minneapolis Private Employment Agencies for the Period 1919 to 1922, M.A. Thesis, 1923, University of Minnesota Archives, pp. 8, 17.

  16. 16.

    Taylor, 1923, p. 2.

  17. 17.

    Correspondence and Subject Files, Women in Industry, Minnesota Commission of Public Safety, Women’s Committee, Location 103.K.7.13B, MHC.

  18. 18.

    Population, general report and analytical tables, Table 25, p. 667. Fourteenth Census of United States taken in the year 1920. Reports. Vol. 2, Washington, 1922.

  19. 19.

    Population, general report and analytical tables, Table 15, p. 54, Fourteenth Census of the United States taken in the year 1920, Vol. 2, Washington, 1922.

  20. 20.

    Susan M. Diebold, “The Mexicans,” in Holmquist (ed.), 1981.

  21. 21.

    Indian Population in the United States and Alaska, 1910, Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Washington, 1915, Table 11, p. 27.

  22. 22.

    Distribution of Foreign Speaking Population, p. 104. Survey 1919, Vol. 2, Minneapolis Young Women’s Christian Association, Records, Box 10, Social Welfare History Archives, University of Minnesota .

  23. 23.

    Distribution of Foreign Speaking Population, pp. 100, 104 and 102. Survey 1919, Vol. 2, Minneapolis Young Women’s Christian Association, Records, Box 10, Social Welfare History Archives, University of Minnesota .

  24. 24.

    June Drenning Holmquist (ed.), They Choose Minnesota: A Survey of the State’s Ethnic Groups, St. Paul 1981.

  25. 25.

    Schmid, 1937, p. 137.

  26. 26.

    Faue, 1991, p. 23.

  27. 27.

    Joan M. Jensen , “Out of Wisconsin: Country Daughters in the City, 1910–1925,” in Minnesota History 59/2, Summer 2004, pp. 48f.

  28. 28.

    Faue, 1991, p. 23.

  29. 29.

    United States Department of Interior, Census Office, Statistics of the Population of the United States at the Tenth Census, June 1 1880, Vol. 1, Table XXXVI, p. 887; United States Bureau of Census, Twelfth Census 1900: Special Reports, Occupations (Washington, 1904), Table 43, pp. 614–617; Thirteenth Census 1910, Vol. IV, Occupation Statistics (Washington, 1914), Table III, pp. 167ff.; Fourteenth Census 1920 (Washington, 1922), Vol. IV, Table 16, pp. 169–185.

  30. 30.

    Women in Industry in Minnesota in 1918, pp. 14–24.

  31. 31.

    Taylor, 1923, p. 2.

  32. 32.

    George Lawson, History of Labor in Minnesota, St. Paul, 1955, pp. 5–12. Elizabeth Faue , 2002, p. 16.

  33. 33.

    Labor Review. Vol. 1. No. 1. April 4, 1907, front page. Later called Minneapolis Labor Review .

  34. 34.

    Lawson, 1955, pp. 18 and 20.

  35. 35.

    Lawson, 1955, p. 165.

  36. 36.

    Taylor, 1923, p. 9.

  37. 37.

    Union Labor Bulletin , April 1915, p. 30. I will come back to the garment workers’ unions in Chapter 5.

  38. 38.

    Union Labor Bulletin . Labor Day Edition 1916, p. 33.

  39. 39.

    Faue, 2002. Passim. Eva McDonald -Valesh left the Twin Cities in the mid-1890s to work nationwide for AFL president Samuel Gompers.

  40. 40.

    Carolyn Daniel McCreesh , Women in the Campaign to Organize Garment Workers, 1880–1917, New York and London, 1985, pp. 32f.

  41. 41.

    Lawson, 1955, p. 115.

  42. 42.

    See for instance Hartman Strom, 1992, p. 8 and several others.

  43. 43.

    Lawson, 1955, Foreword.

  44. 44.

    Lawson, 1955, p. 115.

  45. 45.

    Richard M. Valelly, Radicalism in the States: The Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party and the American Political Economy, Chicago, 1989, p. 21.

  46. 46.

    Peter Rachleff , “Turning Points in the Labor Movement: Three Key Conflicts,” in Clifford E. Clark (ed.), Minnesota in a Century of Change: The State and Its People Since 1900, St. Paul, 1989, pp. 196 and 200.

  47. 47.

    See for instance the volumes of March and May 1917 and February 1918.

  48. 48.

    Lawson, 1955, pp. 33–35. See also David Paul Nord, “Hot-house Socialism: Minneapolis, 1910–1925,” in Donald T. Critchlow (ed.), Socialism in the Heartland, Notre Dame, Indiana, 1986, pp. 144f.

  49. 49.

    Lawson, 1955, pp. 36 and 38.

  50. 50.

    For the split of organized labor in the US on the war issue, see Joseph McCartin, Labor’s Great War: The Struggle for Industrial Democracy and the Origins of Modern American Labor Relations, 1912–1921, Chapel Hill, 1997. The split was, however, part of a more general split of the international socialist labor movement in spring 1917 that preceded the Bolshevik revolution in Russia half a year later.

  51. 51.

    Millikan, 2001, pp. 17ff.

  52. 52.

    Millikan, 1986, p. 4f.

  53. 53.

    Millikan, 1986, p. 4; Millikan, 2001, pp. 12ff, 24.

  54. 54.

    Millikan, 2001, p. 97.

  55. 55.

    Historical sketch of the archive index for Northern Information Bureau , Records, MHS. ALPHA.

  56. 56.

    Letter of September 15, 1920, Northern Information Bureau , Records, Background materials, Location 143.B.15. B. Folder 1, MHS.

  57. 57.

    Letter of November 28, 1921, Northern Information Bureau , Records, Background materials, Location 143.B.15. B. Folder 1, MHS.

  58. 58.

    Walker, 2005, p. 34;

  59. 59.

    Millikan, 2001, p. 73. See also Lois Quam and Peter Rachleff , “Keeping Minneapolis an Open-Shop Town,” in Minnesota History, Vol. 50: 3 (1986), pp. 105ff.

  60. 60.

    Chrislock, 1991, p. 5.

  61. 61.

    Michael Barone, The Social Basis of Urban Politics: Minneapolis and St. Paul, 1890–1905, unpublished paper, no year. Notebooks P 1661, pp. 8–12. MHS.

  62. 62.

    Nord, 1986, p. 134.

  63. 63.

    Nord, 1986, p. 134; Chrislock, 1991, p. 15.

  64. 64.

    Chrislock, 1991, p. 40.

  65. 65.

    Nord, 1986, pp. 137f.

  66. 66.

    Millikan, 2001, pp. 115f.

  67. 67.

    Nord, 1986, pp. 149–152.

  68. 68.

    http://www.doli.state.mn.us/History.asp.

  69. 69.

    Lawson, 1955, p. 32.

  70. 70.

    Robert Asher, “The Origins of Workmen’s Compensation in Minnesota”, in Minnesota History, Vol. 44: 4 (1974), p. 144.

  71. 71.

    Bulletin No. 6, August 1913, The Workman’s Compensation Act, pp. 4f., The State of Minnesota Department of Labor and Industries, Location HD8053.M6A2, No. 1–17, MHS.

  72. 72.

    Bulletin No. 7, September 1913, “Pointers” on the Workman’s Compensation Act, The State of Minnesota Department of Labor and Industries, p. 2, Location HD8053.M6A2, No. 1–17, MHS.

  73. 73.

    Bulletin No. 8, September 1913, Employers’ Reports Under Workman’s Compensation Act and Accident Report Law, p. 2, The State of Minnesota Department of Labor and Industries, Location HD8053.M6A2, No. 1–17, MHS.

  74. 74.

    Bulletin No. 9, June 1914, Opinions of Attorney General and the Department of Labor on Workmen’s Compensation Act, p. 11, The State of Minnesota Department of Labor and Industries, Location HD8053.M6A2, No. 1–17, MHS.

  75. 75.

    Millikan, 2001, pp. 45ff.

  76. 76.

    Asher, 1974, p. 153.

  77. 77.

    Laws Regulating the Employment of Children, Prescribing the Hours of Labor for Women, Revised to 1913, St. Paul, 1913, pp. 5–10.

  78. 78.

    Laws Regulating the Employment of Children, Prescribing the Hours of Labor for Women, Revised to 1913, pp. 13–15.

  79. 79.

    Second Biennial Report of the Minnesota Minimum Wage Commission , Minneapolis, 1922, pp. 78 and 80.

  80. 80.

    First Biennial Report of the Minnesota Minimum Wage Commission , Minneapolis, 1915, p. 3; Second Biennial Report of the Minnesota Minimum Wage Commission , pp. 5f. and 63ff., MHS.

  81. 81.

    Minneapolis Labor Review , July 31, 1914.

  82. 82.

    Correspondence and Subject Files, Women in Industry, Woman’s Committee, Minnesota Commission of Public Safety, Location 103.K.7.13B, MHS.

  83. 83.

    Report, Conference of Departments of Women in Industry of the Middle-West State Divisions, Hull House, Chicago, September 13–14, 1918, p. 6, Minnesota Commission of Public Safety Archives, Woman’s Committee, Location 103.K.6.9 (B), MHS.

  84. 84.

    Second Biennial Report of the Minnesota Minimum Wage Commission , pp. 5f. and 11. MHS.

  85. 85.

    Minnesota Commission of Public Safety, Women’s Committee, Correspondence and Subject Files, Women in Industry—Working Conditions for Women and Children, Location 103.K.7.13B, MHS.

  86. 86.

    Minnesota Commission of Public Safety, Women’s Committee, Correspondence and Subject Files, Women in Industry—Working Conditions for Women and Children, Location 103.K.7.13B, MHS.

  87. 87.

    Second Biennial Report of the Minnesota Minimum Wage Commission , pp. 85f. See also Women in Industry in Minnesota, 1921, p. 5. MHS.

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  1. Linnaeus University, Kalmar, Sweden

    Lars Olsson

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Olsson, L. (2018). The Political Economy of Minneapolis. In: Women's Work and Politics in WWI America. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90215-9_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90215-9_2

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