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The Whiteness of Child Labor Reform in the New South (Paperback, New)
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The Whiteness of Child Labor Reform in the New South (Paperback, New)
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Focusing on Alabama's textile industry, this study looks at the
complex motivations behind the "whites-only" route taken by the
Progressive reform movement in the South. In the early 1900s,
northern mill owners seeking cheaper labor and fewer regulations
found the South's doors wide open. Children then comprised over 22
percent of the southern textile labor force, compared to 6 percent
in New England. Shelley Sallee explains how northern and southern
Progressives, who formed a transregional alliance to nudge the
South toward minimal child welfare standards, had to mold their
strategies around the racial and societal preoccupations of a
crucial ally--white middle-class southerners. Southern whites of
the "better sort" often regarded white mill workers as something of
a race unto themselves--degenerate and just above blacks in
station. To enlist white middle-class support, says Sallee,
reformers had to address concerns about social chaos fueled by
northern interference, the empowerment of "white trash," or the
alliance of poor whites and blacks. The answer was to couch reform
in terms of white racial uplift--and to persuade the white middle
class that to demean white children through factory work was to
undermine "whiteness" generally. The lingering effect of this
"whites-only" strategy was to reinforce the idea of whiteness as
essential to American identity and the politics of reform. Sallee's
work is a compelling contribution to, and the only book-length
treatment of, the study of child labor reform, racism, and
political compromise in the Progressive-era South.
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