person was not guilty of willful negligence. By 1914 more than one-half the states had such laws. In the second place, there developed schemes of industrial insurance in the form of automatic grants made by state commissions to persons injured in industries, the funds to be provided by the employers or the state or by both. By 1917 thirty-six states had legislation of this type. Minimum Wages and Mothers' Pensions. Another source of poverty, especially among women and children, was found to be the low wages paid for their labor. Report after report showed this. In 1912 Massachusetts took a significant step in the direction of declaring the minimum wages which might be paid to women and children. Oregon, the following year, created a commission with power to prescribe minimum wages in certain industries, based on the cost of living, and to enforce the rates fixed. Within a short time one-third of the states had legislation of this character. To cut away some of the evils of poverty and enable widows to keep their homes intact and bring up their children, a device known as mothers' pensions became popular during the second decade of the twentieth century. At the opening of 1913 two states, Colorado and Illinois, had laws authorizing the payment from public funds of definite sums to widows with children. Within four years, thirty-five states had similar legislation. Taxation and Great Fortunes. As a part of the campaign waged against poverty by reformers there came a demand for heavy taxes upon great fortunes, particularly taxes upon inheritances or estates passing to heirs on the decease of the owners. Roosevelt was an ardent champion of this type of taxation and dwelt upon it at length in his message to Congress in 1907. "Such a tax," he said, "would help to preserve a measurable equality of opportunity for the people of the generations growing to manhood. . . . Our aim is to recognize what Lincoln pointed out the fact that there are some respects in which men are obviously not equal; but also to insist that there should be equality of self-respect and of mutual respect, an equality of rights before the law, and at least an approximate equality in the conditions under which each man obtains the chance to show the stuff that is in him when compared with his fellows.” The spirit of the new age was, therefore, one of reform, not of revolution. It called for no evolutionary or utopian experiments, but for the steady and progressive enactment of measures aimed at admitted abuses and designed to accomplish tangible results in the name of public welfare. General References J. Bryce, The American Commonwealth. R. C. Brooks, Corruption in American Life. P. L. Haworth, America in Ferment. E. R. A. Seligman, The Income Tax. W. Z. Ripley, Railroads: Rates and Regulation. E. S. Bradford, Commission Government in American Cities. H. R. Seager, A Program of Social Reform. C. Zueblin, American Municipal Progress. W. E. Walling, Progressivism and After. The American Year Book (an annual publication which contains reviews of reform legislation). "The Muckrakers." pp. 309-323. Research Topics - Paxson, The New Nation (Riverside Series), Civil Service Reform. Beard, American Government and Politics (3d ed.), pp. 222-230; Ogg, National Progress (American Nation Series), pp. 135-142. Direct Government. Ogg, pp. 160-166. Beard, American Government, pp. 461-473; Popular Election of Senators. 244; Ogg, pp. 149–150. Beard, American Government, pp. 241 Party Methods. — Beard, American Government, pp. 656–672. Beard, American Government, pp. 721-752. Questions 1. Who were some of the critics of abuses in American life? 2. What particular criticisms were advanced? 3. How did Elihu Root define "invisible government "? 4. Discuss the use of criticism as an aid to progress in a democracy. 5. Explain what is meant by the "merit system" in the civil service. Review the rise of the spoils system. 6. Why is the public service of increasing importance? Give some of its new problems. 7. Describe the Australian ballot and the abuses against which it is directed. 8. What are the elements of direct government? Sketch their progress in the United States. 9. Trace the history of popular election of Senators. 10. Explain the direct primary. Commission government. The city manager plan. 11. How does modern reform involve government action? On what theory is it justified? 12. Enumerate five lines of recent economic reform. CHAPTER XXIII THE NEW POLITICAL DEMOCRACY Women in Public Affairs. The social legislation enacted in response to the spirit of reform vitally affected women in the home and in industry and was promoted by their organizations. Where they did not lead, they were affiliated with movements for social improvement. No cause escaped their attention; no year passed without widening the range of their interests. They served on committees that inquired into the problems of the day; they appeared before legislative assemblies to advocate remedies for the evils they discovered. By 1912 they were a force to be reckoned with in national politics. In nine states complete and equal suffrage had been established, and a widespread campaign for a national suffrage amendment was in full swing. On every hand lay evidences that their sphere had been broadened to include public affairs. This was the culmination of forces that had long been operating. A New Emphasis in History. - A movement so deeply affecting important interests could not fail to find a place in time in the written record of human progress. History often began as a chronicle of kings and queens, knights and ladies, written partly to amuse and partly to instruct the classes that appeared in its pages. With the growth of commerce, parliaments, and international relations, politics and diplomacy were added to such chronicles of royal and princely doings. After the rise of democracy, industry, and organized labor, the transactions of everyday life were deemed worthy of a place in the pages of history. In each case history was rewritten and the past rediscovered in the light of the new age. So it will be with the rise and growth of women's political power. The history of their labor, their education, their status in society, their influence on the course of events will be explored and given its place in the general record. It will be a history of change. The superior position which women enjoy in America to-day is the result of a slow evolution from an almost rightless condition in colonial times. The founders of America brought with them the English common law. Under that law, a married woman's personal property jewels, money, furniture, and the like-became her husband's property; the management of her lands passed into his control. Even the wages she earned, if she worked for some one else, belonged to him. Custom, if not law, prescribed that women should not take part in town meetings or enter into public discussions of religious questions. Indeed it is a far cry from the banishment of Anne Hutchinson from Massachusetts in 1637, for daring to dispute with the church fathers, to the political conventions of 1920 in which women sat as delegates, made nominating speeches, and served on committees. In the contrast between these two scenes may be measured the change in the privileges of women since the landing of the Pilgrims. The account of this progress is a narrative of individual effort on the part of women, of organizations among them, of generous aid from sympathetic men in the long agitation for the removal of civil and political disabilities. It is in part also a narrative of irresistible economic change which drew women into industry, created a leisure class, gave women wages and incomes, and therewith economic independence. THE RISE OF THE WOMAN MOVEMENT - Protests of Colonial Women. The republican spirit which produced American independence was of slow and steady growth. It did not spring up full-armed in a single night. It was, on the contrary, nourished during a long period of time by fireside discussions as well as by debates in the public forum. Women shared that fireside sifting of political principles and passed on the findings of that scrutiny in letters to their friends, |