Seeing With Their Hearts: Chicago Women and the Vision of the Good City, 1871-1933

Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, Summer 2003 by Newman, Scott A

Seeing With Their Hearts: Chicago Women and the Vision of the Good City, 1871-1933. By Maureen Flanagan (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2002. Pp. xiv, 319. Illus., maps, notes, bib., index. Cloth, $35.00).

In this engaging and well-researched book, Maureen Flanagan examines the history of women's political activism in Chicago during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Drawing upon the records of women's civic organizations and leading activist women, she shows how women built a multi-generational political movement around 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." (5) This vision differed sharply from that of the city's leading men who saw the promotion of business as the primary purpose of government. Flanagan contends that it was the intransigence of these men-in combination with a municipal electoral system that neutralized women's most effective organizing methods-that prevented activist women from realizing their goals.

The first part of the book, which focuses on the activities of women's voluntary organizations, explains how elite Chicago women crafted an independent political agenda during the late nineteenth century. Through club-sponsored social welfare work, growing numbers of women witnessed first-hand the severe hardships imposed upon working-class families by the rigors of industrial capitalism and became convinced of the need for changes in the scope and management of vital city services, including the public school and health care systems. They demanded not only that city government solve pressing social problems, but also that women be given official, direct participation in the municipal decision-making process. More often than not, however, the city's male-dominated political bodies, acting to protect their own self-interests, dismissed women's demands and refused to appoint women to influential city posts.

Many activist women believed the key to breaking the male monopoly on power in Chicago lay in municipal suffrage for women. However, as the last section of the book reveals, even after gaining the right to vote in city elections in 1913, women's ability to influence public policy remained disappointingly limited. For one thing, the male-controlled political parties steadfastly refused to nominate women for municipal office and cast votes against women who ran in party primaries. For another, women found it difficult to integrate themselves into the fractious two-party system without sacrificing the advantages of political coalitions structured around women's interests. This, Flanagan concludes, left activist women with the disagreeable choice of either abandoning municipal politics or joining political parties on men's terms.

Flanagan's analysis is most perceptive in its consideration of the organizing strategies of Chicago's activist women. Comparing their methods to those adopted by women in other cities, Flanagan offers compelling evidence that Chicago women excelled in forging political alliances that united women across racial, ethnic, and class divides. Indeed, at a time when many male politicians exploited such differences for partisan gain, Chicago's activist women refused-and could not afford-to do so. Such collaboration, Flanagan shows, was essential to the viability of their movement locally and distinguished it from others nationally.

By examining the history of women's political activism in Chicago during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Seeing With Their Hearts addresses an important and often overlooked aspect of Illinois history. It is a valuable addition to the study of urban politics and women's activism during the Progressive Era, and offers readers a striking new perspective from which to view the development of Chicago, the strengths and weaknesses of its political system, and today's much-discussed "gender gap" in politics.

Scott A. Newman is a Ph.D. candidate in history at Loyola University Chicago.