Review: Gender and Urban Development in the "City of Big Shoulders," 1871-1933
Reviewed Work(s): Seeing with Their Hearts: Chicago Women and the Vision of the Good
City, 1877-1933 by Maureen A. Flanagan
Review by: Thomas Winter
Source: Reviews in American History, Vol. 31, No. 4 (Dec., 2003), pp. 564-571
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/30031374
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THE "CITY OF BIG SHOULDERS," 1871-1933
Thomas Winter
Maureen A. Flanagan. Seeing With Their Hearts: Chicago Women and the Vision of the Good City, 1877-1933. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002. xiv + 319 pp. Figures, appendixes, notes, bibliography, and index. $35.00
On October 8 and 9, 1871, a fire that had started at a barn, belonging to Patrick
and Catherine O'Leary near their home on 137 DeKoven Street, ravaged an
area of Chicago four miles in length and three-quarters of a mile in width, encompassing much of the commercial heart of the city and the residential
North Division. The fire caused the death of three hundred Chicagoans,
destroyed the homes of nearly a third of the city's population, and resulted in
property damages approximating two hundred million dollars.'
Apocalyptic fears that the fire had wreaked havoc both on the built
environment and on the city's social fabric were widespread in the aftermath of the blaze. Yet amid the ruins, predictions of the inevitability of the city's
rebuilding and expansion emerged. Making room for the rebuilding of
substantial portions of the city, the fire came to be seen as a blessing that had come in a terrible disguise. Chicagoans spoke about the fire both in terms of
grave dangers and tremendous opportunities for the city and its people. Boosters, city planners, architects, philanthropists, urban developers and their visions, have figured prominently in these narratives.2 In her book,
Seeing With Their Hearts: Chicago Women and the Vision of The Good City,
1933, Maureen Flanagan suggests that the 1871 fire inaugurated a new era in struggles over municipal politics. She maintains that gendered notions of the
city and of the purposes of urban development stood at the center of such
debates.
Whereas male political and business elites perceived the occasion as an opportunity for economic growth and development, Flanagan argues that Chicago women advanced a "vision of the city that promoted a concept of urban life and good government rooted in social justice, social welfare, and
responsiveness to the everyday needs of all the city's residents" (p. 5). These women had a "gendered vision of the city ... with an underlying premise of the correct nature and purpose of municipal government that often
WINTER / Gender and Urban Development in the "City of Big Shoulders" 565
dicted and sometimes profoundly threatened the male vision of the profitable
city in which the purpose of government was to foster and protect male economic desires" (p. 195).
Flanagan's book intervenes in debates over the nature of urban
ment and women's contribution to it. Historians have shown that women
formulated political alternatives and created social spaces outside the realms
of men. Recent studies on women, politics and its urban contexts, such as
Sarah Deutsch's Women and the City: Gender, Space and Power in Boston, 1940 (2000); Gayle Gullett's Becoming Citizens: The Emergence and Development
of the California Women's Movement, 1880-1911 (2000); Sandra Harsaager's
Organized Womanhood: Cultural Politics in the Pacific Northwest (1997); Judith McArthur's Creating the New Woman: The Rise of Southern Women's Progressive
Culture in Texas, 1893-1918 (1998); Anne Meis Knupfer's Toward a Tenderer
Humanity and a Nobler Womanhood: African American Women's Clubs in
the-Century Chicago (1996); and Priscilla Murolo's The Common Ground of
Womanhood: Class, Gender, and Working Girl's Clubs, 1884-1928 (1997) have demonstrated how urban women of different class, race, and ethnic
grounds have created social and political outlets of their own. Such spaces
enabled women to articulate their ideas and visions of a better society. Yet,
Flanagan points out that "how urban women and their organizations were
contesting for political power in the city and seeking to reshape both the city and its government" has not been sufficiently investigated (p. 5).
Building on the work of scholars, such as Paula Baker, William Chafe, and
Sarah Evans in particular, who have argued that Progressive-era women
created a model of liberalism fundamentally different from the model created
by men, Flanagan demonstrates that gender took center stage in shaping
debates on a host of municipal issues.3 Seeing With Their Hearts advances our
understanding of the participation of women in municipal politics between
the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century.
Flanagan divides her story into three periods: 1871 to 1893, 1894 to 1916,
and 1913 to 1933. In the aftermath of the 1871 fire, women began to form networks of solidarity, devoted to their vision of community and public
welfare. Between 1893 and 1916, women expanded their social networks and formed a loose-knit, broad-based coalition working for urban betterment. In the 1910s, organizations, such as the Chicago Women's Club (CWC), founded
in 1876, or the Women's City Club (WCC), founded in 1910, and numerous others intervened in debates over the city's schools, welfare, air pollution,
public health, sanitation, housing and housing safety, and recreation. The two decades from 1913-the year Illinois women gained the suffrage in municipal
and federal elections-to 1933 witnessed both significant departures and equally as important setbacks. These decades saw the advent of women's
Flanagan concludes that Chicago remained a masculine environment, or, in
the words of Carl Sandburg, "'the city of big shoulders"' (p. 1).
In 1871, notions of municipal government were limited to public works and the collection of tax revenue. The city of Chicago had not handled any
major relief effort on the scale required by the fire. It was only natural, then, that the mayor's office would turn over the task to the privately run Chicago Relief and Aid Society, founded in 1857. Run by men, the society sought to distribute relief funds in ways that were most conducive with their business
vision of the "city profitable." The women, however, sought to prioritize human need and quickly sidestepped the committee and its rules for
mining eligibility for relief monies. As women contributed to the relief efforts, they formulated "the principles upon which they based their actions. In doing
so, they would espouse principles of public actions that brought them into
conflict with men of the same status" (p. 13).
Flanagan's claim that the events surrounding the fire of 1871 triggered an
upsurge of women's social activism around the turn of the century appears somewhat more tenuous than she suggests. She writes that "[i]t is virtually
impossible to believe that these women had not been influenced by women's actions and ideas after the fire" (p. 32). However she also concedes that while
"[i]t is difficult precisely to know what generated this new municipal activism, . . . the increased activity did come as the city was experiencing extensive labor problems," surrounding the events at Haymarket in 1886
(p. 35). Further, Flanagan acknowledges that it was the 1893 Chicago Columbian
Exposition and the 1894 Pullman Strike that "pushed activist women into
forming more alliances and finding more aggressive ways to present to the public their ideas for the city's development" (p. 55). This would support the periodization for the emergence of a modern urban liberalism that Richard Schneirov offered in his study Labor and Urban Politics: Class Conflict and the Origins of Modern Liberalism in Chicago, 1864-97 (1998). Flanagan makes a case,
however, that the events preceding the Haymarket "Massacre" of 1886, the
Columbian exposition of 1893, and the 1894 Pullman strike broke important
ground for women's activism. The critical years, though, were those after
1894: Flanagan states that "[f]rom 1895 to 1910, Chicago women created a new
public sentiment and a new women's politics through which they
reconceptualized the primary role of the municipal government as directly
providing for the welfare of its people" (p. 59). Slightly qualifying the role and
contributions of women, Flanagan writes that progressive reform ferment
created the context in which women pursued their goals.
While Chicago women actively sought to contest men's control of pal government and ideals of urban development, their vision of the better city often drew on notions of maternalism. Molly Ladd-Taylor, in her book Mother-Work: Women, Child Welfare and the State, 1890-1930 (1994), has
WINTER / Gender and Urban Development in the "City of Big Shoulders" 567
scribed maternalism as a specific female value system, grounded in the
experiences of motherhood, nurturing, and care giving, a notion that women as mothers provided a set of unique services to the state and to society, and
that men should earn a wage sufficient to support their families. Flanagan asserts that Chicago women's activism was not "solely based on maternalist
impulses," but they frequently did make reference to it (p. 78). Yet the way
Chicago women understood ideas of maternalism, motherhood, and
keeping considerably broadens our understanding of the concept. Indeed, the
ideas of maternalism as advanced by Chicago women did have broad
implications: their concept of maternalism included the right to vote--crucialto implementing their ideas-and brought them into conflict with Chicago
men and their ideas about the "city profitable." Chicago women's concept of
maternalism challenged the tacit acceptance of separate spheres and the
separation of production and reproduction that scholars have identified as an important component of the discourse.
Chicago women incorporated notions of maternalism, motherhood, and housekeeping into a vision of a better society. Sophonisba Breckinridge
described this vision as dedicated to the "'the general interest and the
common good'" (p. 145). Women's vision of the common good drew on what
Daniel Rodgers called a "language of the common weal" that made its impact in public politics around the turn of the century.4 Whereas Rodgers has not
explored the gendered dimensions of this language, Flanagan directs our attention to how gender played a key role in the ways in which men and
women articulated different and conflicting notions of the common good.
Chicago women knew all too well that obtaining the suffrage would be
crucial in gaining the political leverage that would make it possible to
implement their agenda. In May of 1894, the Chicago Woman Club, founded in 1876, adopted a resolution to look into the possibility of obtaining the rightto vote. Chicago women saw suffrage as a "priority . . . because it was a
necessary step toward restructuring the institutions of municipal government to provide for the common welfare" (p. 74). The significance of suffrage came to the forefront in the debates and ultimate defeat of a new municipal charter
for Chicago. Chicago businessmen made it clear that they saw an expansion
of the suffrage as a hindrance and obstruction to effective municipal
ment. When the newly proposed city charter did not provide for women's
municipal suffrage, "Chicago women put together a broad-based coalition to defeat it" (p. 78). The charter was subsequently defeated in September 1907.
Women's opposition to the charter galvanized their organizational efforts
across lines of race and class.
The years between 1910 and 1916 contained several turning points for
Chicago activist women. The creation of the Women's City Club, consisting of
the women who had defeated the anti-charter and municipal suffrage
campaigns, in 1910 inaugurated "a new stage in women's municipal work"
(p. 85). More importantly, Flanagan demonstrates that the direct, ized style of municipal activism that these women had been forging across the decades stands in marked contrast to the habits of the progressive members of the [male] City Club, who would gather to debate municipal issues and listen to experts present their opinions" (p. 85).
The moment women did obtain the suffrage-first on the municipal level
and later on the state and federal levels-inaugurated a new and ambiguous period for women's participation in municipal politics and urban
ment. Here, Flanagan builds on works by Kristi Andersen and Nancy Cott.5
Andersen's research has shown that women did not simply fail to make a
difference and they did not necessarily vote like their fathers and husbands. Cott has suggested that instead of looking at voting patterns, we need to look
at women's political work beyond the ballot box and examine how women sought to put their ideals into practice. Chicago women's behavior and political practice supports both arguments. "[A]ctivist women," Flanagan writes, "were optimistic that they were entering a new era of municipal politics in which women could change the city's political process and use government to enact their vision of a common welfare" (p. 124). Women
expected to integrate suffrage and their own agenda into a larger design for a
better city. They were also prepared to participate in partisan politics.
However, they soon had to learn that the right to vote did not translate into political leverage. Flanagan explains that "male control of the political system made it virtually certain that activist women's comprehensive vision of the
good city would never prevail" (p. 124). Indeed, a male-controlled party and power structure continued to defeat and to marginalize women's political
and reform agendas.
Key to the marginalization of women's influence, as Flanagan explains, was an election law that straitjacketed voters into a partisan framework.
Casting a ballot in the Republican primary meant the voter could only vote
for the Republican ticket in the general election. The long-term Chicago
Republican mayor William Hale "Big Bill" Thompson is a case in point:
Chicago women were eager to replace Thompson, a man who had "cultivated some of the worst elements of the Republican party" and who had displayed"complete disdain for women's agenda" (pp. 143, 139). To depose him, those women who identified themselves as Republican (and most activist women did) had to choose the Republican ticket in the primary, where Thompson, however, usually won renomination. In the general election, these women could not swing their votes. In the primaries, women's voting behavior
showed that they attempted to reconcile their partisan affiliations with their non-partisan agenda, but during election time, they voted for their party's
WINTER / Gender and Urban Development in the "City of Big Shoulders" 569
In addition to a voting system that forced women into a partisan political
framework controlled by men, women themselves were often divided
tween their feminine loyalties and their partisan affiliations: "Group ence and community of interest undergirded Chicago women's activism and regularly drew women into common cause rather than splintering them into
groups pursuing particularist interests" (p. 162). As much as their based ideas of urban development united them, partisan politics divided them. Flanagan writes, "Activist women ... had never been a cohesive block on any municipal issue, and continuing differences of opinion among them
helped men to ignore women on a variety of issues" (p. 169).
Women had fought many battles and won only few of them, but they
found themselves in a virtual "no-win situation" in the aftermath of suffrage
(p. 141). Ready and eager to use the tools of organized politics alongside the men, they remained committed to an agenda formulated before women's
suffrage and to their own grassroots and non-partisan methods. "Exclusion,"
Flanagan states, "had given women the opportunity to develop ideas that distinguished them from men and the experience of calling upon other women" (p. 144). However, as Flanagan demonstrates, "women entered a
political system in which men had already struck their political bargains in a
way that determined the . . . objectives of political parties themselves"
(p. 144). Men of both parties were unwilling to support female candidates and
had no intention of supporting their agendas either. Yet women remained
active in their work-both inside and outside of the party system.
A major test for activist women in the 1920s was the transformation of the
National American Association for Women's Suffrage into the League of
Women Voters (LWV) in 1920 and the implementation of the 1921 Towner Maternity and Infancy Protection Act, the very first national welfare
legislation that provided matching funds for maternity and infant health clinics. This law had been long close to the concerns of women reformers throughout the nation and certainly fit well within the ideal of activist Chicago women. Moreover, the founding meeting of the LWV took place in Chicago, and the league had its national offices in Chicago for many years.
Several of its most prominent leaders, such as Julia Lathrop, were veterans of
the battles women had fought with the city's male establishment over
municipal politics for decades. The LWV was firmly behind
Towner and the necessary enabling legislation for local maternity and children's health clinics. Flanagan summarizes that "[f]or activist Chicago women, Sheppard-Towner was important not only because it would
ment new public policy safeguarding the health of women and children, but
also because it would increase the power of government and reshape the relationship of citizens to that government" (p. 160). Indeed, for over two
Towner now promised to institutionalize. If adopted, Sheppard-Towner would have transformed these previously voluntary efforts into a system,
supported by state and federal funds, which women felt would be conducive
to better human as well as public health. The legislation failed despite the
support of the LWV, because "many activist Chicago men opposed this shift"
(p. 161). Men's opposition was not limited to the Sheppard-Towner enabling
legislation. In 1923, the Women's City Club reported that virtually every law that women had worked for and which they felt would have made for a better
city had been defeated by a political process that was firmly in the control of men.
By the end of the 1920s, Flanagan writes, three factors made it virtually
impossible for activist women to achieve their agenda. First, suffrage had provided women with a wider range of opportunities for their political
activism. While women tried to balance partisan politics with their own
partisan practice, "partisan political organizing now competed with
tional women's organizations for their attention" (p. 175). Second, "important elements of urban institutions and structure had remained essentially static
and continued to work against women" (p. 175). Third, Flanagan concludes, "the Progressive era was over." Flanagan writes that "[m]en holding the
balance of political power had ... resolved to their satisfaction the problems created by massive urbanization." To be sure, there were a host of issues that
"had proven virtually intractable," but they "were tied too closely to a
political system with other priorities," articulated by activist women who had
their minds set on the city liveable and not on the city profitable (p. 175).
Confronted with such odds on the municipal level and with the Great
Depression shifting attention to the national level, women's activism, too,
increasingly oriented itself towards the federal policy-making process.
All of this does not mean that women fought in vain for sixty years.
Flanagan even suggests that some of efforts have left an enduring mark on the city's shape. For example, Flanagan suggests that women's efforts may have helped to keep the city's lakefront open to public, non-commercial recreation.
In addition, they did open urban spaces and places to women across class,
race, and ethnic lines. Despite all the efforts of men to block activist Chicago
women and their agenda, they had changed the ways in which Chicago's
residents related to their city in significant ways.
Flanagan's book raises several questions. First, we need to know more
about what happens after 1933. As women failed to achieve their goals on the municipal and state level, they turned their attention to the federal level and "a new generation of Chicago women would turn toward working within the party system" (p. 190). At the same time that women turned their attention away from municipal politics and towards the federal government, "the city
grew more dependent on the federal government, women were even more excluded from municipal decision making" (p. 10). Further research in the
WINTER / Gender and Urban Development in the "City of Big Shoulders" 571
changing relation between women and the city, as well as the national
government after 1933 may help us to better understand why exactly during
the New Deal era-usually associated with more progressive politics-the
power of men in city politics seems to have increased. Second, while this is a
book about gender, a more in-depth study of Chicago's male elites and
institutions that opposed women's effort (as well as the men who voted for
Progressive candidates along with the women) would shed additional light on the debates and conflicts that Flanagan has chronicled for us in
crafted narrative.
Grounded in exhaustive research in the numerous and rich archival
collections available especially in Chicago-area repositories and elsewhere,
Flanagan's book contributes to historiographical debates over urban
ment, municipal politics, and women's contribution to both. Women may have failed in their attempts to transform Chicago "from the City of Big Shoulders into a City of Homes" (p. 201). Flanagan, however, succeeds in
telling us why.
Thomas Winter, assistant professor and acting chair, Department of American Culture and Literature, Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey, is the author of Making Men, Making Class: The YMCA and Workingmen, 1877-1920 (2002). His current research focuses on the social hygiene movement in the century United States.
1. On the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, and its impact on the city, see Carl S. Smith, Urban Disorder and The Shape of Belief: the Great Chicago Fire, the Haymarket Bomb, and The Model Town Of Pullman (1995), 19-22.
2. See, for example, William Cronon, Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (1991), 345-346; James Gilbert, Perfect Cities: Chicago's Utopias of 1893 (1991); Kathleen D. McCarthy, Noblesse Oblige (1982).
3. Paula Baker, "The Domestication of Politics: Women and American Political Society,
1870-1920," American Historical Review 89 (June 1984): 620-47; William Chafe, "Women's History and Political History," in Visible Women: New Essays on American Activism, ed. Nancy
Hewitt and Suzanne Lebsock (1993); Sarah Evans, "Women's History and Political Theory:
Towards a Feminist Approach to Public Life," in Visible Women.
4. See Daniel T. Rodgers, Contested Truths: Keywords in American Politics Since Inependence (1987), 179.
5. Kristi Andersen, After Suffrage: Women in Partisan and Electoral Politics before the New Deal (1996); Nancy Cott, "Across the Great Divide: Women in Politics Before and After 1920," in Women, Politics, and Change, ed. Patricia Gurin and Louise Tilly (1990).
