From Economic Security to Equality: Frieda Miller,Esther Peterson,and the Revival of the Alternative View of Public Administration,1945-1964

Abstract

This article examines how Frieda Miller and Esther Peterson, two influential directors of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Women’s Bureau after World War II, revived and continued the alternative view of public administration through a combination of primary and secondary sources. Miller, who served as director from 1944 through 1953, reestablished a social justice–centered view of public administration through the creation of a special advisory committee and the institution of a new agenda that stressed equality over economic security. Peterson, who served from 1961 through 1964, quickly moved the Women’s Bureau into a political network with women’s labor leaders and the John F. Kennedy presidential administration, helping to create the Presidential Commission on the Status of Women (PCSW) and to enact a federal Equal Pay Act.

Keywords

social justice feminism alternative view of public administration women and public administration United States post–World War II public administration equal pay Frieda Miller Esther Peterson

In the 1930s, public administrators increasingly focused on the idea, first enunciated by Woodrow Wilson in the late 19 century that administrative policies remain apart from any possibly corrupting political influences (Wilson, 1887; see also Goodnow, 1900; Van Riper, 1983). In the next 20 years, this concept, eventually known as the “public administration orthodoxy,”¹ dominated a system centered on hierarchal structures and autonomous authority (see, for example, Adams, 1992; Fry & Raadschelders, 2013, Introduction, pp. 3-4; Luton, 1999, 2003, pp. 171-172; Roberts, 1994; Stillman, 2005, 2015; Waldo, 1984, 1987; Willoughby, 1927 see also White, 1926, 1948, 1951, 1955, 1958).

The prevailing orthodoxy’s emphases on efficiency and objectivity, however, did not receive unanimous consent from the United States’s public administration community. Some practitioners also considered the ramifications of the Second Industrial Revolution. From 1880 through 1920, the industrial transformation transformed the United States into an industrialized, urbanized nation with centralized communication and transportation systems (Dubofsky, 1994; Wiebe, 1967). Yet with these dynamic changes came the coarsening of working conditions, the proliferation of diseases, and the widening of class divisions. Urban reformers who wanted to ameliorate these conditions formed what became known as progressivism (Dawley, 1991; McGerr, 2005). Out of this nascent reformism, moreover, developed a movement called social justice feminism, which in turn created a more social justice–centered, or alternative, view of public administration.

The alternative view of public administration, a term used to encompass the social justice–centered view of public administration of the United States, did not constitute a revolutionary break with the existing system. The initiators of the alternative view, such as Mary van Kleeck and Mary Anderson, acted as public administrators during the United States’s participation in World War I, a time when efficiency and organizational ability assumed primary importance. Instead, the focus of the alternative view of public administration first centered on the institution of considerations of social and economic equity, then gender equality into the pragmatic public administration framework. As the late scholar Peter Self (1972/1977) once stated, this constituted another confirmation of the classic challenge of a governmental system in a democracy: the balancing of democratic needs, particularly fairness and equity, with those of effectiveness and economy. In addition, the advocates of the alternative view of public administration did not pursue gender-specific aims, such as the additional hiring of women in governmental bureaucracies. Instead, they assisted social justice feminism in its primary goal of promoting and passing gender-specific legislation to eventually provide state protection for all workers (Sklar, 1998).

The first stage of the alternative view lasted from 1918 through 1940. Pioneers such as Anderson, van Kleeck, Mary Follett Parker, and Sophonisba Breckinridge instituted the alternative view through their public administrative, philanthropic, and academic work. Social justice feminists and supporters of the alternative view of public administration finally helped to promote and pass the Social Security Act of 1935 and, especially, the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) of 1938, the United States’s first national maximum hours and minimum wages law (McGuire, 2011, 2012a). The second, intermediate stage involved the efforts of Anna Lederer Rosenberg, one of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s closest advisors during World War II. From 1941 until the President’s death in 1945, Rosenberg worked as a political facilitator for the President on such issues as civil rights, national defense, and particularly labor–management affairs (McGuire, 2015).

This article continues that analysis by arguing that the third and final stage, lasting from 1945 through 1964, witnessed the revival and continuation of the alternative view through the efforts of two women: Frieda Miller (1909-1973) and Esther Peterson (1907-1997), directors of the Women’s Bureau of the U.S. Department of Labor from 1944 through 1953 and from 1961 through 1964, respectively. It also argues that Miller’s and Peterson’s efforts shifted the goals of the alternative view from the original aim of economic security to a new objective of gender equality, a shift that presaged the “rights revolution” of the late 1960s (Foner, 1999, pp. 299-305; Sustein, 1990). This process represented a deliberate choice for both women; Miller testified in support of equal pay legislation before Congress in the late 1940s (Cobble, 2014b), while Peterson also advocated such legislation while serving on Miller’s special labor committee. Continuing her support into the early 1960s (see, for example, Bennett, 1960), Peterson became one of the key governmental forces behind the enactment of the federal Equal Pay Act in 1963. She also sought gender equality through the deliberations of the Presidential Commission on the Status of Women (PCSW), created by executive order by the White House in 1961.

It is important to note that Miller and Peterson pursued similar goals through different strategies. In her approximately 6 years as the Women’s Bureau director, Miller served as an initiator, creating an advisory committee of old and new adherents to the alternative view of public administration. During her time at the Women’s Bureau from 1961 through 1964, Peterson worked more as a political networker, using her well-established connections to both labor unions and President John F. Kennedy to help create the PCSW and to enact the Equal Pay Act. After 1964, the alternative view of public administration declined, as women reformers turned more to public lobbying through such organizations as the National Organization for Women (NOW) and litigation (Collins, 2009; Dobson, 2015). Yet, the final stage of the alternative view became an important bridge between the economic-centered views of earlier social justice feminists and the equity-minded attitudes of feminists after the mid-1960s.

The First and Second Stages of the Alternative View of Public Administration, 1918-1945

While the alternative view of public administration did not start until after World War I, the social movement that became its initiating factor resulted from the efforts of a woman well-versed in public administration: Florence Kelley. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, who briefly served as counsel to Kelley’s longtime organization, the National Consumers League (NCL), later remarked that his colleague “had probably the largest single share in shaping the social history of the United States during the first thirty years of [the twentieth century]” (Goldmark, 1953, Introduction, p. v; see also Storrs, 2000).

Born in 1859, Kelley became interested in socialism as a student at Cornell University in the 1880s. In 1891, she moved to Chicago with her children, becoming a key member of Jane Addams’s recently established Hull House. She delved into the industrial studies and other activities undertaken by the settlement house movement (Sklar, 1995). By serving as Illinois’s first factory inspector from 1893 through 1897, moreover, Kelley established an important precedent for future women public administrators. She later mentored Julia Lathrop, the first director of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Children’s Bureau, and Perkins, among many others (Lindenmeyer, 1997; Muncy, 1991; Sklar, 1995).

In 1899, Kelley moved into the burgeoning national progressivism by accepting the position of general secretary of the NCL, a newly formed coalition of women’s organizations. Shortly thereafter, she founded social justice feminism, which focused on the promoting and passing of women’s labor legislation as an entering wedge for the eventual inclusion of all workers under the state’s protection (McGuire, 2004). This strategy encountered great success from 1908 through 1918. The NCL legal network successfully defended women’s labor legislation in two important cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and the New York Court of Appeals (Muller v. Oregon, 1908; People v. Charles Schweinler Press, 1915). In addition, Kelley and other social justice feminists in New York helped the Factory Investigating Commission propose and pass 56 labor laws through the state’s legislature from 1911 through 1915. But the movement encountered difficulties after the end of World War I, as a New York coalition of women’s organizations known as the Women’s Joint Legislative Conference received the effective opposition from a counter network of equal rights feminists, businessmen, and Republicans, and the Supreme Court declared women’s minimum wage legislation unconstitutional (Adkins v. Children’s Hospital, 1923; McGuire, 2004).

With these new, contentious factors, social justice feminism needed new outlets to both continue its existence and await more fortuitous developments. One of those outlets became the creation of an alternative view of public administration. Thus, advocates of the social justice–centered theory of public administration needed to help continue not only the viability of social justice feminism but also the validity of their viewpoint. Two fundamental agents in this definition of an alternative view became Mary van Kleeck and Mary Anderson.

After graduating from Smith College in 1904, van Kleeck soon joined the recently established Russell Sage Foundation (RSF) as head of the Division of Industrial Studies (Alchon, 1985). Within several years, the RSF established itself as the most influential nonprofit organization for social change through its linking together of business, philanthropic, and reformist interests; its use of a new set of methods which drew on Frederick Winslow Taylor’s scientific management theories; and its major investment in statistical investigations (Agoratus, 1996). Van Kleeck worked closely with Kelley and women progressives in New York to establish an evidentiary basis for the successful passage of night work legislation in 1913. Four years later, she became the director of the federal government’s newly created Women in Industry Service, charged with regulating the working conditions confronting women wartime workers (McGuire, 2006).

Anderson came to the United States in 1888 from Sweden at the age of 16 and thereafter settled in Chicago. Over the next 30 years, she quickly rose through the labor union ranks, becoming president of the International Boot and Shoe Workers’ Union, a nationally recognized labor negotiator, and a prominent advocate for the Women’s Bureau within the federal Department of Labor. While working as a special investigator for the Ordnance Department in 1917, she met van Kleeck and joined the Women in Industry Service as its assistant director. Anderson succeeded van Kleeck as the Service’s director after the end of World War I and then became the first director of the Women’s Bureau in 1920 (Anderson, 1951; McGuire, 2012b).

Throughout the 1920s, van Kleeck and Anderson became part of the movement to create an alternative view of public administration. Three other women also proved essential to the formulation of this view. Grace and Edith Abbott established the Children’s Bureau of the U.S. Department of Labor as a formidable advocate of family issues within a federal government still reluctant to confront any national responsibilities in such issues (see, for example, Costin, 2003; Trattner, 1999). Mary Parker Follett (1920) challenged the administrative orthodoxy through her scholarly work, particularly The New State. A longtime social activist and a summa cum laude graduate of Radcliffe College (Metcalf & Urwick, 1942; Introduction, pp. xii-xiii), Follett (1920) supported a policy of what she called “pragmatic administration,” through which participatory decision making from all societal stratums would be considered (pp. 71-162, 271 [quotation], 274-279; see also Stever, 1986).

Van Kleeck complemented these efforts by a combination of public and private activities. After returning to the RSF in 1919, she began further developing her previous concept of industrial citizenship through which labor and the state could work together to eliminate bad working conditions in “an interplay of economic and political activities.” Unfortunately, van Kleeck’s public administrative experience during the 1920s did not provide any satisfactory means for promoting her new views. Appointed to the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Special Committee on Business Cycles and Unemployment in 1921, she found her access to the ostensibly progressive departmental head Herbert Hoover quite restricted. Efforts on the state level, however, proved a different matter. Van Kleeck provided important public support of the difficult, if ultimately successful, effort to pass a 48-hr workweek bill for women industrial workers in New York (McGuire, 2011).

In contrast, Anderson’s main means of establishing the alternative view of public administration came through her directorship of the Women’s Bureau, which held national conferences on women’s work and compiled major reports on women’s working conditions (see, for example, Beyer, 1929). As future U.S. Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins (1976) later remembered, Anderson’s bureau became an important source for possible administrative amelioration of industrial conditions, compiling “a lot of data that we needed in respect to the operation of [labor] laws . . . in different states” (p. 474). Anderson also extended her bureau’s fact-finding capabilities to the difficulties confronted by African American workers moving to Northern urban areas, demonstrating significant disparities, for example, in the wages of White female workers and their Black counterparts in New York City’s laundry industry.

Such efforts to establish and maintain an alternative view of public administration finally succeeded after Franklin D. Roosevelt’s accession to the presidency in March 1933. The next several years witnessed unprecedented successes for the alternative view of public administration. Yet, the decline of national reformist energies, and the encroaching world conflict from Europe and Asia, would signal the end of the first stage of such a view’s development by the 1940 national election.

By the time of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s third successive presidential election, proponents of the alternative theory of public administration could be proud of the passage of national laws such as the Social Security Act and FLSA. Two factors, however, now presaged the end of the first period of the alternative view of public administration. The first concerned a generational conundrum. Major figures from the first generation such as Addams, Breckinridge, and Kelley had either died or retired by 1940. In addition, the second generation was beginning to either lose interest in public administration or end their government careers. For example, van Kleeck now engaged in organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union and the radical American Labor Party, Anderson retired in 1944, and Edith Abbott returned to academe (Alchon, 1998; Costin, 2003). The second and most significant factor lay in the approaching world war. The deepening involvement of the United States in World War II and the Republican gains in the 1942 congressional elections soon meant that any domestic reform advances would be delayed until the war ended. Social justice feminists soon recognized this new reality and began joining organizations such as the Office of Civilian Defense, codirected by Eleanor Roosevelt and the Office of Price Administration (Brinkley, 1996; Cook, 1999; McGuire, 2012a).

In the vacuum created by the development of wartime events and social movement changes, an unlikely continuator of the alternative view of public administration now came to the forefront. Anna Lederer Rosenberg emigrated to the United States at the age of 13 in 1915, part of the last remnant of the massive Jewish emigration from Eastern Europe (Nelson, 2004). But her subsequent life followed a different path from that of other Jewish American women in the United States. Rosenberg became a political organizer and networker in the rough precincts of New York City politics in the 1920s, and then established a lucrative public relations firm that concentrated on labor–management relations and welfare services. By 1941, Rosenberg became a central player in President Roosevelt’s inner circle of presidential advisors.

Rosenberg’s actions as a presidential majordomo allowed her, albeit indirectly, to keep the alternative view of public administration functioning. Skillfully maneuvering between the White House and various interest groups, Rosenberg helped continue essential relations between an increasingly distracted President and such important domestic allies as civil rights organizations and labor unions. Rosenberg’s skill in the latter area grew so important that by 1942, the President stated in a memorandum to his chief advisor, Harry H. Hopkins, to refer any national labor problems to Rosenberg. “Anna will straighten out . . . any change in labor,” Roosevelt’s memorandum continued (McGuire, 2015).

While Rosenberg’s participation in White House activities ended with Roosevelt’s death in April 1945, her continuation of the alternative view of public administration allowed other, postwar proponents of the alternative view of public administration to fully revive and continue the policy. Fortunately, such a proponent had already taken her place within the federal government before Roosevelt’s death.

Frieda Miller and a Difficult Postwar Period, 1945-1961

The post–World War II era presented a more challenging time for adherents in the alternative view of public administration. The initiators of the alternative view never encountered smooth times, particularly during the conservative 1920s. Van Kleeck and Anderson, however, still received major support during that decade and then received greater opportunities during the New Deal years of the Franklin D. Roosevelt presidency (roughly 1933 through 1939). No such benefices occurred, however, after the spring of 1945. Roosevelt’s successor, Harry S Truman, eventually garnered a reputation for progressivism through his “Fair Deal” programs and his pioneering support of civil rights. But the first 2 years of his presidential administration (1945-1947) displayed a somewhat conservative outlook, marked by Truman’s conspicuous failure to support the Fair Employment Act of 1946 and his firing of such social justice feminists as longtime Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins (Blewett, 1974; Martin, 1976). Moreover, the return of Republican control of Congress after the 1946 national elections presented a formidable obstacle (Watson, 2011; Weisbode, 2016). In addition, as demonstrated by various historians (see, for example, Chafe, 2003; Cohen, 2003), the general postwar societal mood in the United States proved anathema to progressivism. The unprecedented national prosperity created a sense of conformity strengthened by the growing middle class ensconced in suburbia and a corresponding emphasis on consumerism (Chafe, 2003; Cohen, 2003).

Because of these postwar difficulties, proponents of the alternative view of public administration needed to seek new allies outside of the federal government. A ready source came from the now sizable, powerful labor union movement, particularly the United Auto Workers (UAW) president, Walter Reuther (Gerstle, 2015; Lichenstein, 1995). Reuther not only promoted a social justice–centered view, but he also appointed the activist Caroline Dawson Davis as head of the UAW’s Women’s Department. In addition, other unions such as the United Packinghouse Workers of America began promoting African American workers such as Addie Wyatt to their leadership ranks (Cobble, 2005, 2014).

Although the federal government did not become a significant agent for postwar domestic reform, one division of the U.S. Department of Labor did continue its previous efforts. In 1944, Frieda Miller replaced Mary Anderson as director of the Women’s Bureau (Laughlin, 2000). Born in 1889, Miller’s life up to her appointment as Anderson’s successor encompassed the paradoxical conjuncture of a Middle Western beginning and a Northeastern immersion into social justice feminism. After completing her bachelor’s degree at the University of Wisconsin in 1911, Miller spent several years trying to finish a doctorate in sociology at the University of Chicago. In 1918, she moved to Philadelphia, where she became secretary of the local branch of the Women’s Trade Union League (WTUL), a national organization centered on creating and expanding trade unionism for working women in the United States (Orleck, 1995).

Over the next 10 years, Miller expanded her connections in the social justice feminist network, particularly with Perkins, then serving as New York State Industrial Commissioner. In 1929, she became head of the New York State Industrial Commission’s Division of Women in Industry and Minimum Wage upon the recommendation of such labor figures as the president of the Pennsylvania State Federation of Labor (Maurer, 1929). For the next 9 years, Miller not only helped enact and administer a new minimum wage law for working women, but she also displayed a knack for developing an overall policy framework. In 1930, for example, Miller sent an extensive memorandum to Perkins suggesting that their agency advocate an agenda supporting the continuation of education for high school students, the maintenance of elderly citizens through a social security program, and the establishment of a gender-neutral minimum wage (Miller, 1930; Montgomery, 1980). This concentration on overall progressive policy goals would remain a constant theme through Miller’s public administration career.

Miller’s rising prominence as a public administrator in the labor field continued throughout the 1930s. She accepted a presidential appointment as one of the United States’s first delegates to the 1936 International Labour Organization (ILO) conference (Montgomery, 1980; Perkins, 1936; see Boris & Fish, 2015; Jensen, 2011). Then, in August 1938, New York Governor Herbert H. Lehman appointed Miller Industrial Commissioner. Miller assumed the position at a critical time. The establishment of unemployment insurance compensation in the state did not bring a corresponding allocation of administrative funds, even after a sudden economic downturn in late 1937 sharply increased unemployment claims. By the late summer of 1938, more than 323,000 unemployment claims remained unprocessed (Report to Governor, 1939). Miller immediately went to work to remedy the situation, requesting and receiving funding for the hiring and training of qualified personnel (Report of Industrial Commissioner, 1942). In addition, she went beyond her mandated duties to undertake a restructuring of the state’s employment service, increasing job placement by 50% within 1 year (Montgomery, 1980; Report of Industrial Commissioner, 1942).

The election of a Republican Governor in November 1942 forced Miller to leave her position as Industrial Commissioner. But her career continued to thrive due to Perkins’s continuing patronage. Within a few months, Miller became a special labor advisor to the U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain, John Winant. Over the next 18 months Miller grew increasingly aware of the growing agitation within the United Kingdom for postwar social change. This popular discontent received partial confirmation with the issuance of the government-sponsored Beveridge Report in 1942, which recommended that the national government provide extensive social services for the British people from “the cradle to the grave” (Chandler, 2002, p. 25). Throughout 1943, Miller immersed herself in British politics and postwar planning, attending the annual Labor Party conference, listening to Sir William Beveridge’s lecture on the reasons behind his famous report, and consulting with a special representative of the British Treasury (Reports to Ambassador Winant, 1943). These varied experiences apparently inspired Miller to think of promoting the same policies in the United States, especially as she possessed no experience in initiating federal legislation before her appointment to the U.S. Department of Labor in 1944 (Cobble, 2014b).

After becoming Women’s Bureau director, Miller realized that the growing agitation and discussion of a postwar society in Great Britain only existed as a muted echo, at best, in the United States. President Roosevelt’s call for an “Economic Bill of Rights” in his 1944 State of the Union address only received a lackluster response from an already antagonistic Congress; tellingly, the only substantial legislation resulting from the presidential initiative occurred in an unprecedented governmental expansion of benefits for returning veterans known as the “GI Bill” (see, for example, Fraser & Gerstle, 1989). With the previously mentioned obstacles of presidential reluctance and congressional opposition after Roosevelt’s death, moreover, Miller evidently decided to quietly form an alliance of like-minded women reformers from both labor and the federal government.²

Miller accomplished this goal of reviving the alternative view of public administration through a goal forced upon the Women’s Bureau by the war’s approaching end: the reconversion of 11 million veterans, nearly all males, into their previous peacetime jobs, and the corresponding loss of employment opportunities for women workers. Miller approached the problem in two ways: She ordered the conducting of an extensive survey of women throughout the United States, and she scheduled a special conference of national women labor leaders and their counterparts in social organizations, similar to conferences used by Anderson in the 1920s (Baxter & Wolfe, 1945; Laughlin, 2000). Held in October 1946, the conference established several solutions for the oncoming crisis facing women workers, such as model language for any future union contracts (National Women’s Trade Union League, 1946). In addition, Miller established key ties with women labor leaders that proved important in the ensuing years (Kessler-Harris, 2003; Montgomery, 1980).

By the summer of 1946, Miller returned to her goal of reviving the alternative view of public administration through the creation of a labor advisory committee. The Women’s Bureau director included on her committee members who could not only formulate new social policies but also those who could later lobby for those policies’ implementation in both Congress and state legislatures. The committee, which met monthly until 1953, included veteran labor activists such as Pauline Newman and rising proponents of the alternative view of public administration such as Esther Peterson (Cobble, 2014b; Minutes, 1950-1953). The committee meetings became a fruitful mixture of policy discussions and practical considerations, ranging from equal pay legislation to networks with state and international trade union organizations (Minutes, 1950-1953; Montgomery, 1980).

In pursuing a new agenda, Miller and the proponents of an alternative view of public administration proposed a tripartite system of goals: economic and social security for everyone in the United States, an end to sexual discrimination against women, and the extension of civil rights for African Americans. While social justice feminists before World War II continually sought the first aim, they never considered the second goal within their strategy. Thus, with rare exceptions such as Florence Kelley and Eleanor Roosevelt, civil rights never became a primary goal. Post–World War II advocates of the alternative view of public administration fully intended to remedy this oversight. But, even though Miller supported this new agenda not only through her special committee but also in congressional committee testimony, efforts to extend comprehensive social security coverage to all citizens, to expand FLSA minimum wage requirements to uncovered workers, and to institute “equal pay for comparable work” for working women, all failed to receive federal approval (Cobble, 2014b, pp. 32-33, 39-43). But some successes occurred on the state level: The state of California continued its wartime-enacted child care programs, while 18 states passed “equal pay for comparable work” laws (Cobble, 2014b, pp. 39-43).

Yet as she increased her efforts to revive and extend the alternative view of public administration, Miller left her Women’s Bureau position in the spring of 1953. Fir nearly 50 years after Miller’s resignation, both close colleagues and scholars assumed that she left because of a new Republican President (Montgomery, 1980; see also Laughlin, 2000; Orleck, 1995). As revealed by historian Landon R. Y. Storrs, however, the actual circumstances proved more complex and tragic. The late 1940s and early 1950s became a period later known as the “second Red Scare,” a successor to the first such period after World War I, when anti-Communist hysteria rose to a peak between 1919 and 1921. In the second period, the chilling realities of the encroaching Cold War and growing suspicions of Soviet influence led to the rise of investigations of federal government employees by both congressional committees and specially appointed executive committees. By 1956, an estimated 5 million federal workers underwent loyalty screening, with approximately 14,700 employees being either dismissed or resigning, based on charges ranging from previous participation in the Communist Party to suspicions of homosexuality (Johnson, 2003; Storrs, 2013, Introduction, 3). Frieda Miller became a minor part of this wide-ranging mosaic. A continuing federal security investigation of Miller not only forced her to leave the Women’s Bureau but cost her a coveted position in the State Department. She never again worked as a public administrator (Jensen, 2011; Montgomery, 1980; Storrs, 2013). It would take another 7 years for another prominent advocate of the alternative view of public administration to take control of the Women’s Bureau.

Esther Peterson and New Advances, 1961-1964

In the early 1990s, Esther Peterson, now nearly 90 years old, contemplated the writing of a memoir. As she wrote the first versions, a struggle ensued: whether to finally state, after 50 years, that she and her late husband, Oliver Peterson, embraced socialism before World War II. She did mention in the early drafts of her memoir that she and Oliver “reject[ed] Communism and regard[ed] ourselves as socialists.” But in the final, published manuscript, Peterson decided to only state that the couple rejected Communism and that her husband received a security clearance from his State Department employer in 1952 (Peterson & Conkling, 1995; Storrs, 2013). The reason for such an elision lay in the painful fact that Oliver Peterson faced continuous investigation from 1949 through 1962, despite receiving three security clearances. Peterson later revealed that the unending yin-and-yang process deeply affected her family, even contributing, she felt, to her husband’s early death from cancer. “I can’t talk about it,” Peterson added, “and Oliver wanted me not to talk about it” (Storrs, 2013, pp. 229-230).

With such complicated, and potentially damning, circumstances, it is extraordinary that Esther Peterson became the Women’s Bureau director in 1961. The political astuteness needed to acquire such a position naturally came at a price. As Storrs (2013) notes, the federal government workers who survived the loyalty investigations of the late 1940s and early 1950s remained committed reformers, but only by couching their proposals in the “language of anticommunism” (p. 205). Peterson undertook such an effort after the early 1950s. She not only established her mainstream credentials by joining the Democratic Party and energetically campaigning for 1960 presidential nominee John F. Kennedy (Cobble, 2005; Peterson Papers, 1960).

But Peterson’s subsequent appointments to the U.S. Department of Labor did not come just as a result of her political connections. Not only had she served on Frieda Miller’s special labor committee but as scholar Dorothy Sue Cobble (2014b) notes, Peterson’s 30 years of experience in the “labor movement and of social justice feminist politics” made her a ready proponent of the alternative view of public administration (p. 49), ranging from being an organizer for the American Federation of Teachers in the mid-1930s after garnering a master’s degree from Columbia University’s prestigious Teachers’ College (O’Farrell, 2006 CIO), the first national legislative representative for the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (ACWA); and the first woman lobbyist for the newly formed merger of the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) (Cobble, 2014a; see also O’Farrell, 2006, p. 1078). In addition, she immediately attracted support from old social justice feminists such as Louise Stitt of the National Consumers’ League and Pauline Newman, who organized an endorsement letter from leading labor women to President-elect Kennedy (Letter to President-Elect John F. Kennedy, 1960; Stitt, 1960). Even so, Peterson kept the experience of Miller’s ostracism from the federal government, as well as her own familial ordeal, well in mind. She quickly sought the support of such allies as the new Secretary of Labor Arthur M. Goldberg and Congresswoman Edith Green of Oregon. Further confirmation of Peterson’s strengthened status in the federal governmental hierarchy came in her being appointed an Assistant Secretary of Labor in August 1961 (Memorandum to President Kennedy, 1961; Peterson Appointment, 1961; Summary of Congressional Action, 1962).

Once these political niceties became realities, Peterson fully focused on the revival of the alternative view of public administration in two ways: the creation of a special presidential commission to consider the social and economic status of women in the United States, and the promotion and passage of a congressional act promoting the idea of equal pay for working women. Knowing well the sometimes-complex labyrinths of executive and congressional decision making, Peterson knew that she needed to move carefully through both figurative mazes to obtain eventual success. This strategy proved invaluable, moreover, given the Kennedy Administration’s initial indifference toward domestic issues, and the Southern Democratic and Republican conservative coalition’s continued power in Congress (Reeves, 1993). Shortly after assuming her office, Peterson began lobbying the White House for an executive order creating the proposed presidential commission. Combining her efforts with both women reformers and Goldberg, Peterson successfully convinced Kennedy to issue Executive Order 10980 creating the PCSW (Cobble, 2014b; Memorandum to President Kennedy, 1961).

The PCSW’s commissioners included the usual politically inclusive appointments, such as the selection of the presidents of the National Council of Negro Women and the National Council of Jewish Women (Collins, 2009). But as the Commission’s executive vice chair, Peterson worked hard to ensure that PCSW possessed maximal political credibility in three ways. First, she helped secure the appointment of Eleanor Roosevelt as Commission chair. In addition, as the PCSW executive vice chair, Peterson publicly established the new Commission’s specific aims, ranging from discrimination in federal government employment to the possible ill effects of women’s labor legislation (Speech, 1962). Finally, she worked closely with other Department of Labor officials, particularly Daniel Patrick Moynihan, to send interim PCSW reports to President Kennedy (e.g., Memorandum to “Pat” Moynihan and Drafts of Interim Report, 1962).

After holding extensive committee and subcommittee hearings for 2 years, the Commission’s final report, American Women, came out in October 1963. The report made three recommendations: that the federal government should reaffirm that the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution guaranteed equality for women, and that litigation in “support of a definite court pronouncement” of such a reaffirmation should be undertaken and that equal opportunity should be the “governing principle” in private employment (Mead & Kaplan, 1965, pp. 151, 211-213). Interestingly, the final report did not include the conclusions of a preliminary report undertaken by leading sociologist and former public administrator Caroline Ware (Fitzpatrick, 1991). In her memorandum, Ware undertook an extensive study of the complex circumstances confronting women, particularly the demands of a postwar suburban society satisfied to see White middle-class women as just beneficiaries of a “marriage market” (Ware, 1961, p. 18). Ware (1961) argued that eventually women in the United States would need to reconcile these demands with the traditional emphasis on “individuality” in the United States (p. 30). While Peterson did send out Ware’s work for comment from PCSW members, a Commission meeting in June 1962 quietly approved the report, but otherwise took no further action (Minutes, 1962)

While the PCSW’s recommendations did not lead to direct governmental action due to the lack of specific commitments, the call for “equality for all women,” however, did spark a national discussion, not unlike the discourse initiated by a predecessor, President Truman’s Civil Rights Commission. Furthermore, the circumstances discussed in Ware’s memorandum bore further fruit when Betty Friedman and other women’s rights advocates co-founded the NOW in 1966 (Barakso, 2004).

Once she secured the creation of PCSW, Peterson prompted action on another key issue on her agenda: the passage of an equal pay bill in Congress. While the issue seemed moot during the 1950s, Peterson remained a definite advocate, even specifically addressing the issue at a banquet celebrating the Women’s Bureau’s 40th anniversary (Bennett, 1960). By the time she became a public administrator the next year, Peterson’s close connections with labor leaders and women’s labor advocates, coupled with the Kennedy Administration’s interest in reviving the national economy, reignited interest in equal pay (Harrison, 1988). By early February 1961, encouraged by a call from Congresswoman Francis F. Bolton, Peterson scheduled meetings with Women’s Bureau staffers and officials from the Department of Labor’s Solicitor’s Office to discuss possible legislation (Equal Pay Memorandums, 1961). Thus, by mid-1961, the Women’s Bureau director began an extensive campaign to garner evidence of gender discrimination from labor unions, state departments of labor, and even previous complainants from the Bureau’s files (Harrison, 1988; see, for example, Preliminary Report, 1961).

Besides preparing documentation in support of equal pay, Peterson also needed to navigate the always-tricky process of achieving eventual legislative action on an equal pay measure. The first step lay in testimony before the congressional committees that considered the pending equal pay legislation. Peterson arranged for the testimony of Eleanor Roosevelt and Gladys Avery Tillett (Notes on Equal Pay Hearing, 1962). While Roosevelt’s impressive political prowess certainly assisted, Tillett proved no accidental selection. In the 1940s, she served as the head of the Women’s Division of the Democratic National Committee, the primary organization for the national revival of social justice feminism. In her equal pay testimony, Tillett, now U.S. representative on the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, revealed how the issue of pay inequality existed as an international issue (Equal Pay Hearings, 1962). Peterson complemented such testimony through her own statements, which combined pragmatic arguments about economic growth and personal advancement with extensive statistical analysis of gender pay inequality throughout the United States (Equal Pay Hearings, 1962). Peterson supplemented her testimony by eventually publishing a Department of Labor pamphlet on the issue (Economic Indicators, 1962).

Yet even with such strong support, passage of equal pay legislation proved difficult for two reasons. First, despite concessions from labor unions on the definition of equal pay, and the important sponsorship of the measure by congressional allies such as Green, the opposition of business interests and their Republican allies prevented passage before legislative adjournment in the summer of 1962 (Harrison, 1988; Summary of Congressional Action, 1962; Summary of Meeting, 1961). Then, two additional obstacles arose when Peterson and her allies gathered to push for new equal pay legislation in the winter of 1963. Walter Heller, chair of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors, objected to the introduction of equal pay legislation, particularly given the political sensitivity of proposed federal income tax reform legislation in the new session (Weisz, 1963). While vigorous lobbying from both Peterson and her deputy, Morris Weisz, finally overcame Heller’s doubts, another, more critical difficulty arose over the new measure’s requirement of “equal pay for comparable work.” Opponents claimed that “comparability” constituted a difficult term to define, even as supporters pointed out the use of such language in federal government policy statements during World War II. In addition, they rejected the proposed replacement of “comparable” with “equal,” fearing that the latter’s similarity with the word “identical” meant that employers could maintain wage inequality by exaggerating insignificant employment differences between male and female workers (Harrison, 1988, p. 98).

As the legislative impasse continued, Peterson and her Women’s Bureau allies considered different approaches on how to pass the bill, including making it part of an FLSA amendment (Memorandum to Secretary, 1963). But they eventually abandoned that approach when labor and congressional allies feared that any equal pay amendments could mean a further attack on pending minimum wage legislation (Memorandum to Secretary, 1963). It eventually became clear that two compromises were necessary: that any administrative enforcement of equal pay would have to be abandoned in favor of litigation, and that the phrase “equal pay for comparable work” would have to be replaced with “equal pay for equal work” (Legislative History, 1963; Major Differences, 1963).

By the late spring of 1963, Peterson’s recognition of the political realities can be seen in her contrasting testimony to the Senate and House committees considering equal pay legislation. In front of enthusiastic supporters such as Michigan Senator Patrick McNamara, she reiterated how unequal pay for women continued to deny them “their full share of the economic benefits” (Statement I of Peterson, 1963). But before a more hostile House committee, Peterson pointed out that not only would the Act not be in effect for 4 months after its passage but that the new bill possessed no effective enforcement powers (Statement II of Peterson, 1963). Thus, Peterson’s seemingly glowing statement after President Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act in June 1963—that the bill would help the “partnership share of women in the industrial life” of the United States—must be seen as politically necessary hyperbole (Cobble, 2005, p. 165; 2014b, pp. 52-53; Statement III of Peterson, 1963).

This ambiguous triumph, however, became a significant harbinger of a new, powerful legal and social development known as the “rights revolution” (Foner, 1999, pp. 299-305; Gerstle, 2015, p. 85). An important step in that revolution became the Civil Rights Act of 1964. An almost unnoticed provision in Title VII of the Act prohibited discrimination on “account of sex,” a statutory prohibition made more ironic by its original introduction by Southern Democrats trying to defeat the measure (Albiston, 2010, pp. 75-76). By the end of the 1960s, women’s rights advocates seized upon Title VII to undertake extensive court litigation that would slowly, yet surely, remove gender barriers, particularly in employment (Collins, 2009; Dobson, 2015). By the end of the 1960s, more and more federal legislation, such as the Voting Rights Act of 1965, further emboldened additional groups, such as Native Americans and gay rights advocates, to push for the extension of their rights (Dobson, 2015; Foner, 1999). This groundbreaking revolution extends into the 21st century, as same-sex couples now use precedents to establish new social and legal rights. Thus, Frieda Miller and Esther Peterson became, however unwittingly, co-progenitors of a process whose effects have now lasted over 50 years.

In 1964, at the request of President Lyndon B. Johnson, Peterson left the Women’s Bureau to become the executive branch’s first consumer advocate (Glickman, 2009; Wadley, 2000). She never returned to public administrative service, instead serving two additional Democratic Presidents in the fields of consumer affairs and international diplomacy (Molotsky, 1997). But she had definitely made her mark in the field of public administration.

Conclusion

After Esther Peterson’s death in 1997, her New York Times obituary writer noted that Peterson was a “dogged consumer advocate whose work has an impact on Americans every time they buy a can of soup or a box of laundry detergent” (Molotsky, 1997). He did not note her key service as Women’s Bureau Director in the early 1960s. But that oversight seemed less remarkable when one considered the fate meted to Frieda Miller, who died unrecognized in 1973, several years after retiring from her ILO position (Montgomery, 1980). Such elisions seem natural, moreover, when one considers that the mainstream theory of public administration focuses on the principles of efficiency and organization. But, as further work has demonstrated in the past 20 years, gender has played an important part in the history of public administration in the United States, particularly in the establishment and maintenance of an alternative theory of public administration that focuses more on justice-centered ends. It is important to note that the proponents of the alternative view of public administration did not seek an alternative just for the sake of women, such as the acquisition of jobs. Instead, they sought a broader aim of social justice, in which all persons, regardless of gender, enjoyed the same employment and other rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. In addition, advocates such as Miller and Peterson also wanted to protect the rights of children through adequate day care and sufficient wages for their parents. That these goals remain presently unfulfilled and pressing shows how foresighted the proponents of an alternative view of public administration became in the 1940s through 1960s.

This alternative theory or view of public administration became established in three stages. First, influenced by their work in the social justice feminist movement, federal public administrators such as Mary van Kleeck and Mary Anderson established the alternative theory after World War I. Van Kleeck did so through a combination of federal administrative work and her conception of industrial citizenship, while Anderson contributed through her longtime direction of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Women’s Bureau. The first stage of this alternative theory reached its apex during the years 1933 through 1940, when the New Deal established the idea of the federal government as a central mediator in the working and social lives of U.S. citizens, particularly in the passage of such acts as the Social Security Act of 1935 and the FLSA of 1938.

The second stage of the alternative theory of public administration went through a problematic period, as the United States’s involvement in World War II necessarily forestalled any further attempts at domestic reform. From 1941 through 1945, Anna Lederer Rosenberg indirectly continued the alternative view through her political facilitation for President Franklin D. Roosevelt in civil rights, national defense, and particularly national labor–management issues. But Roosevelt’s death in April 1945 naturally diminished Rosenberg’s ability to continue the alternative view of public administration. Other proponents would have to undertake the difficult, tricky process of reviving and continuing the alternative view of public administration.

This article has argued that Frieda Miller and Esther Peterson became such forces for the revival and continuation of the alternative view from 1945 through 1964. While both women acted as pragmatic incrementalists, Miller initiated more policies, while Peterson operated as a political networker. But each woman demonstrated how public administrators not only can implement, but influence, public policy. Miller’s work came easily to her, as she possessed widespread experience in both social justice feminism, the major catalyst of the alternative view of public administration, and labor issues, ranging from work in New York State’s Industrial Commission to the U.S. Ambassador to London’s office. Upon her appointment as Women’s Bureau Director in 1944, Miller subtly yet skillfully establishing herself as an advocate for working women through her first overseeing the Bureau’s preparation for postwar conversion, then by forming a special advisory commission that not only focused on women’s labor issues but also provided a learning experience for such young labor leaders as Esther Peterson. In addition, Miller and her supporters deliberately shifted the focus of the alternative view of public administration from economic security to gender equality. This new focus did not encompass the legal prohibition of all gender differences advocated by the then-pending Equal Rights Amendment. Instead, proponents of the alternative view of public administration began concentrating on the need for gender equality in specific, grounded situations such as the advocacy of equal pay based on comparable work and the expansion of employment opportunities for all women. Miller’s efforts to revive and implement the alternative view of public administration encountered only limited success, most particularly because of her forced resignation from the Women’s Bureau because of her suspected Communist connections.

Esther Peterson did not encompass the extensive public administrative experience of Miller before her accession to the Women’s Bureau directorship in January 1961. But her continuation of Miller’s efforts did not mean any less commitment to the revival and continuation of the alternative view of public administration. Instead, her shrewd political networking enabled her to finally establish two aims long-sought by supporters of the alternative view of public administration. By mid-1961, she successfully established good working relationships with congressional allies such as Edith Green and her superior, U.S. Secretary of Labor Arthur Goldberg. Then, with the additional assistance of longtime labor allies, she convinced the White House to issue an executive order establishing the PCSW. While working as the new Commission’s vice chair, Peterson began working on the enactment of an Equal Pay Act in Congress. While neither the presidential commission’s final report nor the passage of the Equal Pay Act in 1963 meant immediate governmental action to institute gender equality, the administrative and legislative accomplishments did help initiate both the women’s movement of the mid- to late 1960s and the “rights revolution.” The ramifications of those developments, and the subsequent counterreactions, continue to affect public policy in this century.

Thus, this article demonstrates, as does a growing body of work, that public administration in the United States did, and does not, exist in an ahistorical vacuum but instead is part of a historical context that includes its evolution as a “[gendered] discourse” (Raadschelders, 2000, p. 518; see also Burnier, 2008, p. 518; Schachter, 2011; Shields & Rangarajan, 2011; Stillman, 2002, 2005; Stivers, 2000, 2002).

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers and editors of The American Review of Public Administration who made this article a better effort, as well as the helpful archival staff at the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Finally, I wish to dedicate this article to Kathryn Kish Sklar, Robert Hueston, and my recently deceased mother, Irene Mullen McGuire.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author Biography

John Thomas McGuire is a person who knows well both sides of the public administration orthodoxy. He served as a trial attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice after being appointed under the U.S. Attorney General’s Honor Program in 1991 and has written about the alternative view of public administration in its historical context in Administration & Society and the Public Administration Review. The 2005 winner of the Pennsylvania Historical Association’s biannual article award, he is currently a practicing attorney and a lecturer in history at Siena College near Albany, New York.

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