Securing political returns to social capital: Women's associations in the United States, 1880s-1920s

Journal of Interdisciplinary History

Volumn 29, Issue 4, 1999, Pages 613-638

  Clemens, Elisabeth S ^a  

^a Department of Sociology ^*

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0010161113     PISSN: 00221953     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1162/002219599551831     Document Type: Review

References (55)

1. Karl Marx, "The General Formula for Capital," in Robert C. Tucker (ed.), The Marx-Engels Reader (New York, 1978; 2d ed.), 335.
2. James S. Coleman, Foundations of Social Theory (Cambridge, 1990), 300-321, is explicit about the limited fungibility of social capital.
3. Robert D. Putnam, with Roberto Leonardi and Raffaella Y. Nanetti, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton, 1993), 167.
4. Sidney Verba, Kay Lehman Schlozman, and Henry E. Brady, Voice and Equality: Civic Voluntarism in American Politics (Cambridge, 1995).
5. Coleman, Foundations, 304.
6. John W. Mohr and Francesca Guerra-Pearson, "The Differentiation of Institutional Space: Organizational Forms in the New York Social Welfare Sector, 1888-1917," in Walter W. Powell and D.L. Jones (eds.), Bending the Bars of the Iron Cage: Institutional Dynamics and Processes (Chicago, forthcoming).
7. The copyright of the postcard is 1910. Paula Baker, "The Domestication of Politics: Women and American Political Society, 1780-1920," American Historical Review, LXXXIX (1984), 620-647;
8. Clemens, "Organizational Repertoires and Institutional Change: Women's Groups and the Transformation of U.S. Politics, 1890-1920," American Journal of Sociology, XCVIII (1993), 755-798;
9. Clemens, idem, The People's Lobby: Organizational Innovation and the Rise of Interest Group Politics in the United States, 1890-1925 (Chicago, 1997);
10. Robyn Muncy, Creating a Female Dominion in American Reform, 1890-1935 (New York, 1991);
11. Anne Firor Scott, Natural Allies: Women's Associations in American History (Urbana, 1991);
12. Kathryn Kish Sklar, Florence Kelley and the Nation's Work: The Rise of Women's Political Culture, 1830-1900 (New Haven, 1995);
13. Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States (Cambridge, 1992).
14. Karen J. Blair, The Clubwoman as Feminist: True Womanhood Redefined, 1868-1914 (New York, 1980), 119.
15. Susan B. Anthony and Ida Hasted Harper, The History of Woman Suffrage, 1883-1900 (Indianapolis, 1902), IV;
16. Susan B. Anthony and Ida Hasted Harper, idem, The History of Woman Suffrage, 1900-1920 (New York, 1922), VI.
17. For collective biographies, see Linda Gordon, "Black and White Visions of Welfare: Women's Welfare Activism, 1890-1945, "Journal of American History, LXXVIII (1991), 559-590;
18. Catherine Harris and Inzer Dyers, "Social Backgrounds and Ideologies of Women Active in Woman Suffrage and Social Reform, 1870-1930," Quarterly Journal of Ideology, XII (1988), 61-84;
19. Carole Nichols, Votes and More for Women: Suffrage and After in Connecticut (New York, 1983);
20. Susan Ware, Beyond Suffrage: Women in the New Deal (Cambridge, 1981).
21. NAWSA, Proceedings (1894), 89-91;
22. Proceedings (1916), 112-113. By 1916, delegates were no longer listed by name in the "Report of the Committee on Credentials."
23. Clemens, People's Lobby, 294-308;
24. Nancy F. Cott, The Grounding of Modern Feminism (New Haven, 1987), 85-114.
25. Mary I. Wood, The History of the General Federation of Women's Clubs: For the First Twenty-two Years of Its Organization (New York, 1912), 99-103;
26. Mary S. Gibson, A Record of Twenty-Five Years of the California Federation of Women's Clubs (1927), 67.
27. G. Thomas Edwards, Sowing Good Seeds: The Northwest Suffrage Campaigns of Susan B. Anthony (Portland, 1990), 159, 190, 232;
28. Gibson, Record, 5;
29. McCulloch to Alice Locke Park, November 5, 1908, Box 1, PK 227, Alice Locke Park Correspondence (henceforth ALPC), Huntingdon Library, San Marino, Calif.
30. Naomi Rosenthal et al., "Social Movements and Network Analysis: A Case Study of Nineteenth-Century Women's Reform in New York State," American Journal of Sociology, XC (1985), 1022-1054.
31. Catt to [Clara M.] Schlingheyde, November 22, 1902, PK 158, ALPC;
32. "Minutes of the Executive Board," August 5, 28, 1905, PK 155, ALPC.
33. Mark Granovetter, "The Strength of Weak Ties," American Journal of Sociology, LXXVIII (1973), 1360-1380.
34. Although it has often been claimed that the WCTU was a critical training ground for suffrage activists, some scholars have argued that this reputation was based primarily on the programmatic commitment to suffrage championed by WCTU leader Frances Willard but that it was not reflected in actual ties between the WCTU and suffrage organizations. The organizational affiliations of the seventy-one suffrage activists in this study, however, tell a more complex story. Apparently, women were more apt to move from the WCTU to suffrage organizations than vice versa, and the links between the WCTU and suffrage were stronger in the Midwest and South than in the Northeast. For contrasting interpretations, see Ruth Bordin, Woman and Temperance: The Quest for Power and Liberty, 1873-1900 (Philadelphia, 1981), 118-123;
35. Rosenthal et al., "Social Movements," 1046.
36. Arthur L. Stinchcombe, "Social Structure and Organizations," in James G. March (ed.), Handbook of Organizations (Chicago, 1965), 154.
37. Women were coded as members of the NAWSA hierarchy if they ever held national office, including the position of field secretary but excluding membership on national committees. NAWSA organizers include all other women holding office or committee positions in the national organization or state affiliates. Skocpol, "Unravelling From Above," The American Prospect, XXV (1996), 20-25.
38. College Equal Suffrage League of Northern California, Winning Equal Suffrage in California (1913), 13;
39. Mrs. Dorcas James Spencer, A History of the Women's Christian Temperance Union of Northern and Central California (Oakland, n.d.), 66-67.
40. Clemens, People's Lobby, 17-40, 206-224.
41. Wilda M. Smith, "A Half Century of Struggle: Gaining Woman Suffrage in Kansas," Kansas History, IV (1981), 88.
42. Cannon to Anne Martin, February 19, 1914, Box II, Anne Martin Papers (henceforth AMP), Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
43. In an oral history, Mabel Vernon, an organizer for the National Woman's Party, acknowledged, "I didn't vote very many times. The time that I distinctly remember voting was for Adlai Stevenson. I went to Delaware to vote for Adlai." This reluctance to vote partly reflected her residence in Washington D.C., but her remarks also suggest a deeper distaste for partisanship ("Speaker for Suffrage and Petitioner for Peace," Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 1976, 78). Abby Scott Baker to Martin, September 21, 1916, Box I, AMP.
44. Cannon to Martin, 1914?, Box II, AMP.
45. "Mrs. Funk, Suffragist, for Wilson," New York Times, 7 Sept. 1916, 6;
46. "Suffragists Lose in Rules Committee," New York Times, 18 Jan. 1914, sec. II, 2.
47. William H. Crawford, "Mrs. Bass Presents Democracy's Claims," New York Times, 21 Sept. 1920, 10;
48. New York Times, 1 July 1920, 1.
49. "Hearst Fight Spurs Woman Democrats," New York Times, 10 July 1922, 15.
50. Cannon to Martin, June 3, 1914, February 18, 1915, Box II, AMP.
51. "Pacifists Condemn and Praise Wilson," New York Times, 11 Feb. 1917, sec. I, 6;
52. Katharine Fisher to Vernon, November 8, 1918, Box 1, Mabel Vernon Correspondence, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (emphasis added).
53. In 1904, Gregg was defeated by five votes for election as second auditor (NAWSA, Proceedings [1904], 53). Such contested elections were relatively rare.
54. Barbara J. Steinson, American Women's Activism in World War I (New York, 1982), 26.
55. Barbara J. Steinson, American Women's Activism in World War I ( 1982), Ibid., 310.