Harnessing the Power of Motherhood: The National FlorenceCrittenton Mission, 1883-1925

[Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Book Review

Katherine G. Aiken. Harnessing the Power of Motherhood: The National
Florence Crittenton Mission, 1883-1925. Knoxville: University of
Tennessee Press. 1998. Pp. xxiv, 266. $38.00.

Charles Crittenton established the Florence Crittenton Mission in
1883 to rescue prostitutes in New York City. Under Crittenton's
leadership and that of his successor, Kate Waller Barrett, it became
a national organization with homes for "fallen women" in
seventy-three cities across the United States. Although historians
have examined the National Florence Crittenton Mission (NFCM) before,
this new study by Katherine G. Aiken is a detailed analysis that
argues that the NFCM was one of the most significant social welfare
movements at the turn of the century. Aiken places the organization
in the mainstream of Progressive social welfare reform, with its
emphasis on efficiency and the role of experts. Alluding to some of
the recent scholarship on women's involvement in Progressive-era
reform, Aiken also argues that a maternalist vision shaped the NFCM's
work, as women became increasingly prominent in the organization.

The early years of the NFCM were informed by a sense of evangelical
mission in which rescue work was seen, both by Crittenton himself and
the volunteers who ran the homes, as a practical application of
Christianity. Their aim was to save prostitutes and convert them to
Christianity, while providing them with an alternative place to live.
This was accompanied by a campaign against the double standard of
sexual morality that condemned female prostitutes but condoned the
actions of their male clients. Aiken thus suggests that Crittenton's
work was in the tradition of antebellum moral reform with its attacks
on the institution of prostitution as a threat to the home but
sympathy for the prostitute herself.

Aiken sees Barrett, Crittenton's successor, as a transitional figure
between sentimental benevolence and professional social work. Under
her leadership, the NFCM took on a distinctly female and maternalist
outlook that resulted in substantial changes in its mission. Barrett
saw the treatment of "fallen women" as a reflection of women's status
in society, and she self-consciously sought to use motherhood as a
way to increase the power of women. Thus, she emphasized the
redemptive power of motherhood as a way of saving "fallen women."
Barrett shared this belief with a growing number of women from
similar backgrounds, who used motherhood as a means to challenge the
boundaries between the public and private spheres. In the case of the
NFCM, this meant placing emphasis on women's capabilities,
particularly as trained experts, in running the Crittenton homes.
Increasingly, the work of the NFCM focused on helping unmarried
mothers by providing them with shelter, medical care, and training to
support themselves and their babies. Unlike many child-saving
agencies, the NFCM insisted that unmarried mothers should not give up
their babies. The NFCM also became involved in wider issues that
included the white slave trade, women's health care, and child-care
facilities for working mothers, as well as lobbying for the rights of
illegitimate children and, eventually, woman's suffrage.

This book began twenty years ago as a dissertation, which perhaps
explains why, although it acknowledges some of the recent scholarship
on women's reform in the Progressive era, it does not fully engage in
the debates provoked by this literature, especially on issues
relating to race and class. It would have been particularly helpful
had the book's topic been related more explicitly to other social
welfare initiatives by conservative women during this period. Aiken
has written a very sympathetic account of the NFCM's work and does
not adequately deal with the many criticisms that earlier historians
have made of the organization. Her reliance on materials produced
almost entirely by the NFCM itself results in a limited perspective
that largely ignores the inmates of the homes themselves and skirts
the issue of whether or not the NFCM was ultimately successful,
either on its own terms or those of the "fallen women" it sought to
help. Admittedly, it is difficult to get at this kind of material,
but Aiken's assertion of a sense of fellow feeling between NFCM
workers and the women they sought to help is romanticized and
unproven. Although this is undoubtedly a useful study of the work of
the Florence Crittenton Mission, it does not address many of the
wider issues it raises.

Elizabeth J. Clapp
University of Leicester

<http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ahr/105.1/br_68.html>