American Reform Research Articles

“Times Change”: Frank J. Webb Addresses Robert Morris on the Promise of Reconstruction

In 1869, African American author Frank J. Webb returned to Washington, D.C., to become a “Carpetbagger” in the Reconstruction South. In a letter to black Bostonian Robert Morris, Webb illustrated the richness of antebellum African American reform networks and portrayed one man’s boundless optimism for race relations in postbellum America.

Robber Barons Redux: Antimonopoly Reconsidered

The antimonopoly critique of big business that flourished in the United States during the 1880s is a neglected chapter in the history of American reform. In this essay, a revised version of Richard R. John's 2011 Business History Conference presidential address, John shows how this critique found expression in a gallery of influential cartoons that ran in the New York City–based satirical magazines Puck and Judge. Among the topics that the cartoonists featured was the manipulation of the nation's financial markets by financier Jay Gould.

Workers' Rights and the Distributive Constitution

Progressives have forgotten how to think about the constitutional dimensions of economic life. Work, livelihood, and opportunity; material security and insecurity; poverty and dependency; union organizing, collective bargaining, and workplace democracy: for generations of American reformers, the constitutional importance of these subjects was self-evident. Laissez-faire, unchecked corporate power, and the deprivations and inequalities they bred were not just bad public policy—they were constitutional infirmities. Today, with the exception of employment discrimination, such concerns have vanished from progressives' constitutional landscape.

Robber Barons Redux: Antimonopoly Reconsidered

The antimonopoly critique of big business that flourished in the United States during the 1880s is a neglected chapter in the history of American reform. In this essay, a revised version of Richard R. John's 2011 Business History Conference presidential address, John shows how this critique found expression in a gallery of influential cartoons that ran in the New York City–based satirical magazinesPuckandJudge. Among the topics that the cartoonists featured was the manipulation of the nation's financial markets by financier Jay Gould.

¿Han funcionado las reformas educativas en América Latina? Un estudio de los casos de Argentina, Brasil y Chile.

A casi diez años del cierre político del ciclo neoliberal que enmarcó las reformas educativas en América Latina de los años ’90, este trabajo evalúa su éxito en tres países latinoamericanos –Argentina, Brasil y Chile-. El análisis se apoya en el planteo teórico-conceptual desarrollado por Martin Carnoy en su texto “¿Están funcionando las reformas educativas en Latinoamérica? Nuevas perspectivas” y en otros derivados de aquél, como modelo alternativo a los análisis clásicos de las reformas educativas y de evaluación la calidad de sus sistemas educativos. Metodológicamente, se utilizarán diversos indicadores, ponderados por Carnoy para la consideración del éxito de las reformas latinoamericanas: (a) la expansión del acceso al sistema, (b) el desempeño de los sectores más desfavorecidos y (c) el mejoramiento de factores asociados a logros educativos. Los datos se centran, principalmente, en el nivel de educación secundaria, el nivel en donde se presenta la mayor dificultad. La cobertura del nivel primario es prácticamente total y disminuye, rápidamente, cuando se considera el nivel medio. Analíticamente, el estudio compara el impacto de las reformas en los países mencionados, y entre la propuesta de análisis de Carnoy y los modelos tradicionales de evaluación de reformas. Finalmente, interroga acerca de la verdadera capacidad de mejoramiento que los procesos de reforma han tenido para la población de esos países -especialmente para Argentina- no sólo en términos educativos sino también respecto de su democratización y, en función de la temática de la Conferencia: la disminución de la vulnerabilidad, injusticia e inequidad social.

STRANGE BEDFELLOWS: FR. JOHN A. RYAN AND THE MINIMUM WAGE MOVEMENT

Fr. John A. Ryan (1869–1945) was one of the early advocates of minimum wage laws in the United States. The thesis of this paper is that in three respects Fr. Ryan stood apart from other advocates of the minimum wage. First, during the period of his work, economics was developing on the basis of the positivist conception of science. Fr. Ryan’s case for the minimum wage combined economics with “non-scientific” theology and philosophy. Second, most religiously motivated American reformers were Protestants, and their advocacy was grounded in the Protestant Social Gospel movement. This was different from Fr. Ryan’s grounding in the social encyclicals of Popes Leo XIII and Pius XI, which themselves were grounded in the Catholic Church’s constant teaching that man is made in the image of God. Third, many reformers were motivated not at all by religion, but by the utilitarian calculus that had become the foundation of the social sciences. Although Fr. Ryan made utilitarian judgments in his analysis, he was not an ethical utilitarian.

Talk with You like a Woman: African American Women, Justice, and Reform in New York, 1890-1935

Talk with You like a Woman: African American Women, Justice, and Reform in New York, 1890-1935

Cheryl D. Hicks . Talk with You Like a Woman: African American Women, Justice, and Reform in New York, 1890–1935 . (Gender and American Culture.) Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 2010. Pp. xiv, 372. Cloth $65.00, paper $24.95.

Cheryl D. Hicks . Talk with You Like a Woman: African American Women, Justice, and Reform in New York, 1890–1935 . (Gender and American Culture.) Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 2010. Pp. xiv, 372. Cloth $65.00, paper $24.95.

MERJ special issue—editorial

The overall theme for this Special Issue is Mathematics Education in Rural Schools: Evidence-based approaches. Guiding the selection of papers to be included was the desire to present a range of approaches that highlighted some of the more general and specific issues that impact on mathematics education in rural contexts. In the Australian context, the Melbourne Declaration of Educational Goals for Young Australians (MCEETYA 2008) articulates a focus on equity and social justice in education. The document recognised the need for collaboration amongst stakeholders to commit to promoting excellence in Australian schooling that is free from (amongst other things) discrimination based on geographic location, that builds on local cultural knowledge and experiences of Indigenous students, and that establishes partnershipswith local communities. The Declaration also contains a commitment to the development of a high-quality teaching workforce in all Australian schools. However, care needs to be exercised when advocating change. Reform agendas, such as those that have emerged as a consequence of the American Reform and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009, can actually work against the ongoing efforts to sustain quality teaching and learning in rural areas. Charter schools are being encouraged, but in many rural areas local resources are not always sufficient to establish and develop such a structure. In some instances, the high turnover rates of qualified teachers or the lack of access to basic infrastructure can impact adversely on a community’s capacity to sustain quality schooling. Large-scale national survey data has provided a clear picture of the teaching and learning environment, the priorities, and the professional learning needs of rural teachers (Lyons et al. 2006). Included in the findings were the impacts of high annual staff turnover rates, difficult to staff schools, professional isolation, teaching outside areas of qualification, unmet professional learning needs, accessing quality learning experiences and opportunities for students—including alternative activities for gifted and talented, special needs and Indigenous students. Data that has been Math Ed Res J (2011) 23:77–81 DOI 10.1007/s13394-011-0015-2

A Transnational Temperance Discourse? William Wells Brown, Creole Civilization, and Temperate Manners

In the nineteenth century, temperance movements provided the occasion for a transnational discourse. These conversations possessed an intensity throughout Britain and the United States. In America temperance often became associated with strongly nationalistic Euro-American forms of identity and internal purity. Nonetheless, African American reformers and abolitionists bound themselves to temperance ideals in forming civil societies that would heal persons and provide communal modes of democratic freedom in the aftermath and recovery from chattel slavery. This paper explores the possibilities of temperance as a transnational discourse by considering its meaning in the life and work of the African American author and activist, William Wells Brown. Brown expressed a “creole civilization” that employed the stylistics of the trickster as a unique mode of restraint that revealed a peculiar power of passivity that was able to claim efficacy over one’s life and community. This meaning of temperance diverges from and dovetails with certain European meanings of civilization that were being forged in the nineteenth century. Brown was in conversation with temperance reformers in America, Britain, and Europe. He imagined the possible meaning of temperance in African, Egyptian, Christian, and Islamic civilizations. He speculated upon the possibility of temperance as a defining characteristic of a transnational civilization and culture that would provide spaces for the expression of democratic freedom. Brown reimagined temperance as a form of corporeal restraint that offered a direct and sacred relation to the land, space, people that appeared in between an ethnic nationalist ethos and the European imperialistic civilization.

Translating Race and Caste

AbstractIn the late nineteenth century, Indian and African American social reformers began to compare struggles against racial oppression in the United States with movements against caste oppression in India. The majority of these reformers ignored what was lost in translating messy particularities of identity, status and hierarchy into the words “race” and “caste” and then again translating between these words. While exploring the limitations of such a double translation, this article argues that race/caste analogies were often utilized in opposition to white supremacy, caste oppression, and other forms of injustice.

The Furnace of Affliction: Prisons & Religion in Antebellum America (review)

Reviewed by: The Furnace of Affliction: Prisons & Religion in Antebellum America Anne C. Rose (bio) The Furnace of Affliction: Prisons & Religion in Antebellum America. By Jennifer Graber. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011. Pp. xii, 234. $39.95 cloth) What do prisons and religion have in common? In The Furnace of Affliction, Jennifer Graber convincingly answers that the newly constructed prisons of the early American republic were physical and symbolic sites of public debate about personal redemption and social ethics. Across the transatlantic world around 1800, institutions that were designed to reform criminals gradually replaced brutal physical punishments and jails randomly housing lawbreakers along with the poor and insane. Nowhere was Christianity more visible in this transformation than in the United States. Graber examines the [End Page 215] prisons of New York State and the chaplains who not only ministered to inmates but also spoke out vigorously about policy. Theologically, these Protestant clergymen were a disparate group, ranging from evangelicals convinced of the prisoners' sinfulness to Quakers and other liberals more hopeful about character. For every step forward toward making the prison a place of disciplined labor, Bible-reading, and repentance, the chaplains faced discouraging conditions of overcrowding, violence, and renewed corporeal punishment. They were tenacious reformers who seemed nearly "haunted" by their cause, to the point that one former chaplain, living in the Midwest after the Civil War, arranged for his body to be buried at Sing Sing (p. 178). The lure of prisons for Christian reformers, Graber suggests, was the opportunity the institutions offered them to address the problem of suffering. The way this moral drama played out in early America is the intellectual anchor of The Furnace of Affliction. To be sure, Graber's book is a well-crafted historical case study. She nonetheless highlights the religious outcome: reformers "trapped by this tension between punitive and reformative impulses" (p. 181). If prisoners were perceived as willfully sinful and hence deserving of punishment, then harsh measures were acceptable and failure to reclaim the inmates excusable. Not surprisingly, disheartening prison realities repeatedly assaulted the theologies of the chaplains and made them doubt their own good intentions. In the background, the recent legal separation of church and state made their work all the more uncertain. The chance to redeem a distressed captive population drew them to prison work, at the same time that the prospects for enduring moral reformation of the prisoners were modest at best. All these struggles exacted a religious price, Graber concludes. Contention and compromise in the secular setting of prisons eroded denominational traditions—"Quaker silence, Presbyterian prayer, and Methodist discipline"—and left a bland "religiosity of citizenship that invoked God's blessing on moral living, hard work, and obedience to secular authority" (pp. 176-77). Prisons operating as places of reformation also strangely challenged [End Page 216] the civil society they intended to serve. Graber underscores the paradox that the nation's aspiration to be democratic advanced hand in hand with "the socially degrading treatment of criminals" (p. 182). Her analysis calls attention to how often social separation, a recurring American reform impulse, has ambiguously mixed hopes for renewal with restricted freedom. Whether citizens of the early republic voluntarily departed for utopian colonies or frontier communities or else involuntarily found themselves confined in an asylum or a prison, relocation carried the enticing promise of a fresh start without entanglements. Yet, Graber asks us to see that separation was sometimes no more than dismissive segregation. Precisely because prison reform continues today, the ethical attitude of free citizens toward the incarcerated remains a compelling issue. No matter what the practical success or failure of Christian reformers in antebellum prisons, these Americans produced a sustained print record of official reports, religious tracts, and memoirs. They spoke out because the issues raised by prisons were fundamental to their values. Jennifer Graber has done full justice to these historical conversations in her excellent book. Anne C. Rose Anne C. Rose teaches history and religious studies at Penn State University. Her most recent book is Psychology and Selfhood in the Segregated South (2009). Copyright © 2011 Kentucky Historical Society

Maintaining WTO Discipline: Procedural Guidelines Versus Economic Substance in GATT/WTO Safeguards

WTO rules for safeguards have helped individual WTO Members to discipline domestic protectionist interests and to advance a generally liberal trade policy stance. This constructive use of safeguards and other trade remedies has been more effectively supported by the parts of the rules that deal with procedure (e.g., participation of interested parties) than by those parts that attempt to specify the circumstances in which an import restriction is permitted (e.g., serious injury to a domestic industry that results from imports). The chapter advances these points by describing how Latin American reformers used safeguards and anti-dumping as part of the liberalizations they have put in place in recent decades. It also documents the evolution in the United States of trade policy institutions such as the USTR and the Industry-Trade Advisory Committees and ‘Section 301’ have and how safeguard procedures have come to provide import users a critical role.

<i>Quaker Constitutionalism and the Political Thought of John Dickinson</i> (review)

Reviewed by: Quaker Constitutionalism and the Political Thought of John Dickinson Beverly Tomek Jane E. Calvert. Quaker Constitutionalism and the Political Thought of John Dickinson. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Pp. xiv, 382. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. Cloth, $99.00.) John Dickinson has been an enigma for most historians of the American Revolutionary period, who have had a hard time reconciling his role as the "penman" of the American Revolution with his refusal to sign the Declaration of Independence. Further complicating matters was his active participation on the battlefield during the war, after he refused to call for [End Page 231] independence. Jane Calvert has finally solved the puzzle by focusing on the influence of Quakerism in Dickinson's unique constitutional theory. In the process of explaining Dickinson, she has offered insight into the influence of the Society of Friends on U.S. constitutional history, as well as American reform from colonial times to the twentieth century. Calvert's reassessment of John Dickinson's role in the revolutionary and founding era of the United States is so much more than another "founding father" biography. It is instead one of the most thorough treatments of American Quakerism in general and Quaker politics and resistance in particular. Quaker Constitutionalism and the Political Thought of John Dickinson offers new insight into the role of Quakers in the creation of governments in North America, as well as in the American Revolution. It also sheds new light on the influence of the often-unappreciated Dickinson. Finally, it describes in rich depth both the foundation and the legacy of Quaker reform. Calvert begins her study with a promise to do what few scholars have attempted: "to show precisely what Quakers have contributed to American political culture and how they accomplished it" (1). She then systematically destroys the notion that during the American Revolution Quakers were passivists or "withdrawers" at best and Loyalists at worst. As her narrative unfolds, she describes a unique Quaker constitutional theory that shaped not only the earliest constitutions of Pennsylvania but also, ultimately, the U.S. Constitution. This theory contained two key ideas. First, the Constitution was a living and evolving document that would be guided to perfection by enlightened leaders, and second, those hoping to guide this evolution had a number of techniques at their disposal, the most radical of which was civil disobedience. According to Calvert, Quakers were very active in opposing laws that they considered unjust, but with few exceptions they could not support the notion that revolution was a legitimate option when fighting for their rights. Put simply, Quakers believed that reform was often necessary but that it had to be brought about in a systematic manner that respected the existing constitution. Otherwise, chaos would ensue and the rights of religious dissenters could be jeopardized. After describing in detail the basis of Quaker constitutionalism, Calvert uses John Dickinson as a case study to describe how Quaker ideas affected and were affected by the tumult of the American Revolution. She argues persuasively that the notion of Quakers as passivists who withdrew from the political world in the years leading up the break with England is too simplistic. Instead, she describes a trifurcated situation in which some Quakers did indeed withdraw because of their passivism while others, such as the Free [End Page 232] Quakers, joined the fight for independence with relative ease. A third group, best represented by Dickinson, pushed for colonial rights through civil disobedience and economic resistance but fell short of calling for independence. According to Calvert, Dickinson, a product of the Quaker milieu though not a professed Quaker himself, fought for change within the boundaries of constitutional resistance because he believed, as Quakers had for generations, that while it was one's duty to protest injustice, such protest must respect the existing constitution or the results would be illegitimate. Her explanation of Dickinson's actions in terms of the Quaker constitutional theory goes far in solving the historical puzzle that Dickinson's career has presented. Calvert offers an analysis of the group's resistance and reform efforts that historians of any time period will find useful. She describes in great detail the foundations of civil disobedience...

Как в США принимался закон о здравоохранении

The article develops the theme of American health care reform (the beginning see in: F. Burzhalov, Health Care Reform in the United States (Socio-Economic Aspects). “MEMO Journal”, 2010, no. 10). The author examines institutional and procedural aspects of the adoption of the law on health care, in particular how its ideas and main points were formed and promoted, what difficulties the government encountered in doing so, what effort were undertaken to convince public opinion in the need to support the reform, etc.

Latin America’s Growing Security Gap

Balancing freedom and security is a challenge for any democracy, yet in Latin America, governments are once again addressing this issue as the region becomes increasingly violent. A legacy of authoritarianism has led Latin American reformers to advocate limits on their security forces, directing their militaries towards external threats and democratizing their police to focus on community issues. However, violent actors have become more capable and organized, overwhelming the capabilities of police. Rather than calling the military back on to the streets, as some states have done, the best solution may be found in hybrid security forces that combine a democratic law enforcement orientation with the capability to contain emerging intermediate level threats.

Imputation and Impartation: Union with Christ in American Reformed Theology – By William B. Evans

Imputation and Impartation: Union with Christ in American Reformed Theology – By William B. Evans

Juveniles in Court

Nineteenth-century American reformers were concerned about the influence of immaturity and development in juvenile offenses. They responded to their delinquent youths through the creation of juvenile courts. This early American juvenile justice system sought to treat children as different from adults and to rehabilitate wayward youths through the state's assumption of a parental role. Although these rehabilitative goals were never fully realized, the field of American child psychiatry was spawned from these efforts on behalf of delinquent youths. Early child psychiatrists began by caring for juvenile offenders. The function of a child psychiatrist with juvenile delinquents expanded beyond strictly rehabilitation, however, as juvenile courts evolved to resemble criminal adult courts-due to landmark Supreme Court decisions and also juvenile legislation between 1966 and 1975. In response to dramatically increased juvenile violence and delinquency rates in the 1980s, juvenile justice became more retributional, and society was forced to confront issues such as capital punishment for juveniles, their transfer to adult courts, and their competency to stand trial. In the modern juvenile court, child psychiatrists are often asked to participate in the consideration of such issues because of their expertise in development. In that context we review the role of psychiatrists in assisting juvenile courts.

Life without Conventionality: American Social Reformers as Summer Campers on Lake Memphremagog, Quebec, 1878–1905

Historians have interpreted the rise of the wilderness holiday movement in the late nineteenth century as a middle-class response to the belief that modern urban life was leading to social degeneracy. The increasingly popular boys' camps, in particular, are said to represent a conservative reaction against the feminization of society. But the summer camp established by the Barrows family on the Canadian shores of Lake Memphremagog does not fit this mold. Rather, it was a semi-utopian environment in which prominent American social reformers felt free to apply their progressive ideals, with increased gender equality being at the forefront.

O FENÔMENO EDUCATIVO NA AMÉRICA LATINA: BRASIL, VENEZUELA, MÉXICO E CHILE

From the Brazilian, Venezuelan, Mexican and Chilean realities, this article means to point out elements related to the educative phenomenon in Latin America. For such, it uses as methodological procedures the compared analysis, that through the differentiation and from association makes it possible a reading next to a complex and diversified reality like the one studied here. In the perspective of understanding the Latin American educative phenomenon, having by reference the four countries mentioned, it was used the data collection presented by distinct organisms that have as an objective, elaborate periodical panoramas from the Latin America and Caribbean realities, considering the social and economical variables. The process of systematization had by sense the reforms from the 1990 decades that, beginning from Washington Council, designed the Latin American reforms in such period, what made it possible an understanding about the role of the State and from the educational policies made it effective and it has direct influence in what concerns the educative phenomenon analyzed in here.