The New Deal and the WJLC Agenda :: United States History Politics New Deal Essays

The New Deal and the WJLC Agenda "I think that there was a direct line from the progressivism of Theodore Roosevelt through [New York City] Mayor [John Puroy] Mitchel, to Governor Smith, to Governor Roosevelt, to President Roosevelt, to the national scene . . . . It's all in one episode.-Frances Perkins. INTRODUCTION By April 1933, when Governor Herbert H. Lehman signed the new minimum wage bill for working women, the agenda pursued by the Women's Joint Legislative Conference began to assume national proportions for three reasons. First, the election of New York State Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt as president in November of 1932 presented an opportunity for progressive-minded reformers. Second, Conference leaders such as Molly Dewson, Frances Perkins, and Rose Schneiderman left the New York scene to pursue a reform agenda in Washington, D.C. Dewson became the head of the Women's Division of the national Democratic Party, while Perkins assumed the position of U.S. Secretary of Labor, the first female cabinet officer in American history. Schneiderman found herself appointed to the National Recovery Administration (NRA) after Congress created the agency in June 1933. Finally, and most importantly, a powerful ally helped facilitate the continuation of the Conference agenda. Eleanor Roosevelt, the n ew First Lady, effectively promoted women in the New Deal. As her biographer Blanche Wiesen Cook shows, Roosevelt worked with Molly Dewson to compile a list of qualified women for federal appointments. "By 1935," Cook notes, "over fifty women had been appointed to ranking national positions and hundreds to leadership positions in various government agencies on the state and local level." From 1933 through 1938, Frances Perkins, Rose Schneiderman, and Molly Dewson fought to promote a maximum hour/minimum wage agenda on the federal level. Perkins utilized her new cabinet position to gather together old Conference allies into a new coalition that pressured both the White House and the Congress to pass federal legislation. Schneiderman saw the NRA as a means of advancing the gains made in New York State. Using her connection to Eleanor Roosevelt, the NYWTUL president witnessed mixed results in the fight to extend protection to all women workers, regardless of race. Dewson functioned more as a behind-the-scenes facilitator, an activity consistent with her direct connection with the national Democratic Party. Working with the First Lady, Dewson placed such protà ©gà ©s as Elinor Morehouse Herrick in important New Deal-related positions. This subtle but effective use of patronage helped the New York State minimum wage bill at a time when the Supreme Court had seemingly nullified the measure in a 1936 case, Morehead v.