Civilizing Capitalism: The National Consumers' League, Women's Activism, and Labor Standards in the New Deal Era

Abstract

Civilizing Capitalism provides a valuable history of an organization that is often too readily dismissed in the years following the Progressive Era. Landon R. Y. Storrs chronicles the efforts of the National Consumers' League (NCL) to protect workers from the worst effects of industrialization during the 1930s. She knits the NCL's efforts in the South, a number of which were successful, into the story of national labor reform and deftly connects Progressive Era activism to New Deal liberalism. Storrs is at her best when she tackles the minute detail of the policies, ideologies, and strategies behind the creation of labor regulation during the depression. The NCL chose to pursue protection for the most vulnerable workers, especially women, through legislative channels in the hopes that these laws might become the “entering wedge” for higher standards for all workers. Storrs is careful to note the league's individual successes but ultimately concludes that “the shift to federal, maleinclusive policy eventually diminished women experts' control over labor standards administration” and hampered labor protection for women.