2
MOVING AGAIN

5
A New Frontier for Women: The Kennedy Administration

The inauguration of John Kennedy in January 1961 marked a sea change: the end of postwar politics in America. For some fifteen years, national leadership had dealt with postwar problems: the establishment of a sound national and international economy; rebuilding Europe's industrial base; ensuring jobs for breadwinners in the United States; capping inflation and ending wartime government regulation; and coping with newly organized international spheres of influence. With the nation looking over its shoulder at two decades of depression and war, both Truman and Eisenhower had confronted the task of reestablishing a stable society. Now the time had come to face the future.

Elected in 1952, the avuncular Eisenhower had presided over eight years of national consolidation; but if Eisenhower's relaxed demeanor had suited the temper of the electorate in the fifties, by 1960 problems had emerged that called for a more active approach. The GI bill, with its subsidized mortgages for veterans, and a national highway construction program had permitted young couples to leave the crowded cities and buy homes in the suburbs in which to raise their families; they commuted to work by private car. The cities they had left, however, were now disproportionately populated by the poor, who were stuck in decaying and depressing tenements. Although personal income had jumped in the decade, in 1957 a severe recession signaled an end to the feeling of national prosperity. That same year the Soviet Union further undermined national confidence by orbiting two space satellites, feats that appeared to indicate a significant advantage in technical capabilities. Other observers indicted the complacency and boredom afflicting middle-class Ameri-

cans. During the last two years of Eisenhower's administration, the overwhelmingly Democratic Congress confronted an unyielding chief executive. By the time the 1960 campaign began, John Kennedy's clear liberal theme—his exhortation to "get the country moving again"—resonated strongly for many Americans.^[1] His election expressed a readiness on the part of a large segment of the population to meet the challenges of the 1960s head on.

A nascent liberalism had been visible even during the 1950s. The Supreme Court had ordered the desegregation of the nation's public schools in 1954, thus fueling the civil rights movement. The Democrats had firmly regained control of Congress, although the presidency stayed in Republican hands. By 1959 several liberal Democrats—among them Kennedy, Edmund Muskie, Eugene McCarthy, Frank Church, and Philip Hart—and liberal Republicans—Nelson Rockefeller, Mark Hatfield, Clifford Case—had won election in either congressional races or gubernatorial contests. A small antinuclear movement sought the control of atomic weapons.^[2]

Despite his victory, the narrow margin by which Kennedy won—two-tenths of 1 percent—hampered his efforts to enact the multifaceted program he detailed under the rubric "The New Frontier" in his nomination acceptance speech. As the days of the new administration slipped by, the Kennedy "style" occupied more newspaper space than the Kennedy accomplishments. Indeed, his administration terminated so abruptly that many have since claimed that the Kennedy administration was mostly style and that, if his foreign affairs decisions were misbegotten and dangerous, his domestic efforts had hardly any substance at all.

But style and substance are not unrelated phenomena. kennedy's call to public concern—"Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country"—represented a new dedication to an aggressive liberal politics, and it served as a national inspiration. After the election Michael Walzer, writing in the left-liberal periodical Dissent, observed: "There is an openness to new ideas probably unlike anything since the thirties."^[3] In March 1961 a New York Times reporter described the change in the White House: "In two short months President Kennedy has

set for the White House a physical and mental pace unmatched in modern times . . . in an urgent effort to solve or alleviate accumulated domestic and foreign problems."^[4] Seven major pieces of legislation had been sent to Congress: aid to depressed areas, extension of unemployment benefits, a 25 percent increase in the minimum wage, medical care for the aged, federal aid to education, urban renewal, and commodity control programs. The development of the Peace Corps, Kennedy's sympathy with Martin Luther King, his public appreciation of the arts reverberated with the young. Even many of those who did not join the Peace Corps or engage in voter registration drives in black communities felt imbued with a sense of possibility and the expectation that Americans would do more and become better—that problems existed to be solved, not endured, that poverty, racism, war, Communism, illiteracy, hunger, and ugliness could and therefore should be eliminated by national dedication to a public purpose.^[5]

It was a legacy that had both good results and bad. Most of the domestic legislation that Lyndon Johnson succeeded in getting through Congress in the terrible aftermath of Kennedy's assassination had already been initiated by the Kennedy team. So had the extended war in Vietnam. But in both cases the "style" was an authentic political event. It encouraged national energies that continued beyond Kennedy's life, through the 1960s, facilitating movements for women's rights, consumers' rights, ecology, and mental health services. It also produced, in the words of historians David Burner and Thomas West, "some of the finest social legislation . . . of the century."^[6]

Kennedy's style inspired Americans who saw him only from a distance or through the cool medium of television, but his impact on his own team was even more intense. During the transition, Kennedy's staff drew up extensive programs for each department, and his appointees all recognized that for the first time in years proposals for federal action were welcome.

It was characteristic of Kennedy's pragmatic liberalism, however, that the proposals sought not the ideal but the feasible. His liberalism lacked the fervor of Eleanor Roosevelt's and Adlai Stevenson's, and Kennedy distrusted fanaticism. Respectful of intellectuals but impatient with excessive deliberation, he fa-

vored "technical" solutions over ideological ones. Thus, aware of his razor-thin electoral victory, and preferring movement to inertia, Kennedy often chose executive action when it was a possibility. This strategy allowed him to avoid confrontation with an unintimidated Congress, whose Republican—Southern Democratic majority stood able to turn back any Kennedy initiative, especially in civil rights.^[7]

So, in response to a burgeoning civil rights movement, the Justice Department under Attorney General Robert Kennedy brought suits to protect black voting rights, and kennedy appointed blacks to executive positions to compensate further for the lack of legislation. He also appointed a committee on equal employment opportunity to replace two existing but ineffective committees. The order banning discrimination in housing came in November 1962, and in June 1963, only two and a half years into his term, Kennedy told the nation that his administration had aligned itself with a civil rights revolution. As white-run governments in the South responded with violence to black demands for decent treatment, the Kennedy administration employed conciliation, exhortation, political pressure, litigation, and ultimately federal troops to persuade racist opponents to obey the law. In 1963, after a review of federal government and federal contractor employment practices, the administration introduced an omnibus civil rights bill to mandate equality in employment and public accommodations. John and Robert Kennedy did not keep all their promises to black civil rights leaders, and often the administration's dilatory responses indicated grudging acceptance of political realities rather than a spontaneous sense of moral outrage. Still, the Kennedy administration offered more support to black activists than any previous administration, and many black Americans regarded the Kennedy brothers as heroes.^[8]

If Congress viewed the civil rights measures with mixed emotions, they welcomed Kennedy's proposals concerning the economy. When Kennedy took office, 7 percent of the labor force was looking for jobs. Even with the sometimes controlling influence of conservative Southern Democrats, Kennedy succeeded in extending Social Security benefits, raising the minimum wage, and procuring federal monies for housing and public

works. Economic bills had two purposes: to revitalize the economy and lift poor Americans out of poverty, and to exploit national human resources in order to achieve a stronger position with respect to the Soviet Union. Expanding opportunities for women would further both those goals.^[9]

Democratic Party Women on the Outs

Kennedy started with no particular public agenda for women.^[10] Like most other male politicians, he was aware that women voted, but in the absence of a broadbased movement for women's rights he did not devote much attention to winning their votes as a bloc. As always, his mother and sisters figured prominently in his campaign, and, although he did not seek out women as advisers, he had accepted the assistance of Marjorie Lawson, a prominent black attorney, in his 1958 senatorial race. In 1960 she became director of the civil rights section of the presidential campaign. Congresswoman Edith Green ran Kennedy's campaign in Oregon.^[11] Few top political party women played a role in Kennedy's presidential campaign, because few had joined him for the primary battles. After he won the nomination, the reception from the Kennedy campaign was lukewarm for most of the women who had supported his opponents. (Despite Kennedy's overtures, Eleanor Roosevelt chose to keep her distance.)^[12]

Margaret Price of Michigan, a close associate of Michigan governor G. Mennen Williams, represented virtually the only Democratic committeewoman who had any clout within the Kennedy camp. The Michigan Democratic party had identified itself with the Kennedys early in the campaign and had offered effective assistance. Williams himself recommended that Price, whom many Democrats regarded as the most competent woman politician in the country, become part of the Kennedy entourage. Price worked closely at the Democratic convention with Kennedy's aide Myer Feldman. After his nomination the candidate rewarded Price for her efforts by giving her the Democratic National Committee position held by Katie Louchheim, vice-chairman of the DNC and director of women's activities.^[13] (In-

censed at being shunted aside, Louchheim nevertheless accepted a minor post at the State Department.)

From that position Price tried to influence the candidate with regard to women's issues. In a campaign memorandum, Price counseled that "women (particularly organization and leadership women) respond to being 'included in.'" Price promised that if Kennedy offered evidence that qualified women were welcome, he would gain "enormously" in respect and allegiance from women community leaders. At the moment, she observed, "the absence of professional women in any staff capacity in the Kennedy entourage has led to an initial impression that his is an all-male cast." The presence of women would "give an incentive" to women throughout party ranks, she said. Price recommended that Kennedy present her to the press to emphasize the importance of women in policy-making roles and urged him to hire more women "onto his inner circle." Moreover, she advised, women party leaders needed to be integrated into the campaign and invited to party conferences, which at the moment were all male.^[14]

But Kennedy preferred his largely male coterie, and he ignored her recommendations. He also declined to give Price a visible role in the campaign. Instead of including her in the group that traveled with the candidate, campaign manager Robert Kennedy recommended that Price go on independent campaign trips. She objected, saying that party leaders disliked making the additional arrangements. Kennedy refused to acquiesce; of the more than five hundred campaign stops Kennedy made, Price appeared with him on only twenty-one occasions.^[15]

After he won the party nomination Kennedy did make an increased effort to attract the women's vote, but not by wooing party women or promising stepped-up efforts to improve women's status. The campaign formed two committees: the Committee of Labor Women, which included such notable reformers as Mary Anderson, Elizabeth Christman, Gladys Dickason, and others and was run by Esther Peterson of the Industrial Union Division of the AFL-CIO, and the Women's Committee for New Frontiers, which also boasted prominent liberal women, including Frances Perkins, Eleanor Roosevelt, Eugenie Anderson, Anna Rosenberg, and Agnes Meyer. These committees

served in publicity and fund raising, not policy: they were intended to indicate the candidate's sympathy for the causes for which these women were known. Thus, they made special efforts to call women's attention to programs regarding medical care for the aged, federal aid to education, and full employment, issues that Kennedy's staff believed concerned female voters.^[16]

On only a few occasions did Kennedy address proposals aimed specifically at the position of women. He hinted at one female appointment, saying that a consumer counsel in the Office of the President would be "perhaps a woman familiar with consumer problems." In a letter to daycare advocate Elinor Guggenheimer, a member of the Women's Committee for New Frontiers, he endorsed federal aid for childcare. Finally, to the surprise of many, including members of his own staff, he also appeared to have signed a letter endorsing the Equal Rights Amendment, which he had never before supported; although this statement turned out to have been a campaign blunder, it remained the official stance. (This incident is discussed in full in chapter 7.) The Republican candidate, Richard Nixon, paid hardly more attention to the status of women; his promises tended to concentrate on appointing women to top-level positions, but his endorsement of the ERA was genuine, in keeping with Republican tradition.^[17]

After Kennedy's hairbreadth victory, Price, following her predecessors, encouraged the president to include women in his administration. In a transition memorandum she maintained that, although "women should not be appointed to high public positions simply because they are women, . . . pressures are strong for the appointment of women to top level public office. Millions of citizens . . . will give close attention to these appointments and the serious waste of manpower that would result if such appointments are not made." Price recommended that the new president appoint women to posts not previously held by women and briefly reviewed for him the records of Presidents Wilson, Roosevelt, Truman, and Eisenhower. She then enumerated, department by department, the jobs in which she thought a woman could appropriately serve: secretary of labor, ambassador, delegate to the United Nations, assistant secretaries of the

Treasury, defense, and labor, treasurer, and director of the Mint. Unlike Edwards, Price did not fight for specific women to fill specific positions; instead, she attached to her memorandum the résumés of some two dozen women.^[18] Of this group, only four eventually received Senate-confirmed appointments: Esther Peterson, as assistant secretary of labor and director of the Women's Bureau; Eugenie Anderson, as minister to Bulgaria; Elizabeth Smith, as treasurer of the United States; and Lucia Cormier, as collector of customs for Portland, Maine. Of these, Peterson would clearly have gotten her position without Price's efforts; treasurer had been a "woman's job" since Harry Truman named Georgia Neese Clark to the post; Anderson had first been appointed an ambassador in 1949; and collector of customs of Portland, Maine, was a position of no policy-making significance. Twelve other women received minor or temporary appointments. Price, who had also vainly sought an administration job, was disappointed in the small numbers.^[19]

Displeased party women attacked Kennedy on Price's behalf as well as their own. After Kennedy selected his cabinet, Doris Fleeson, a well-known journalist, commented scornfully in her column: "At this stage, it appears that for women the New Frontiers are the old frontiers."^[20] A month after the inauguration, Emma Guffey Miller told Kennedy: "It is a grievous disappointment to the women leaders and ardent workers that so few women have been named to worthwhile positions. . . . As a woman of long political experience, I feel the situation has become serious and I hope whoever is responsible for it may be made to realize that the result may well be disastrous." A reply came not from the president himself, but from presidential aide Lawrence O'Brien, which offended Miller further. Such a thing, Miller complained, "never would have happened under Franklin D. Roosevelt or President Truman."^[21] When the list of the fourteen top assistants to Peace Corps director Sargent Shriver included not a single female name, Fleeson again lambasted the President, declaring it "ludicrous" that of two hundred appointments he had made so far, only eight had gone to women.^[22] Even Eisenhower, wrote Fleeson, had done better than that.

Margaret Price loyally tried to redeem the Kennedy appointment record. On November 1, 1961, she published a list of the

eighty-eight women named to administration posts, but, rather than helping, the enumeration merely called attention to the problem. Of that number, fifty-four had received appointments to minor committees and commissions or to positions such as collector of customs, fourteen became special assistants to executives (probably named by other government officials, not by the president), and eight of the others were simply reappointed to jobs such as emergency planning office directors or representatives to various United Nations bodies. Only a few held positions of real visibility or had the ability to make policy: Anderson, Peterson, White House physician Dr. Janet Travel, Frances Willis as ambassador to Ceylon, and Marie McGuire as commissioner of the Public Housing Administration. Esther Peterson was the only woman in the subcabinet.^[23] Genevieve Blatt, secretary of the Pennsylvania Democratic State Committee, wrote to Emma Guffey Miller a month after the list came out: "Things do seem to get worse and worse, so far as women in Washington are concerned, don't they?"^[24]

In July 1963 one man did seem finally to get the President's attention. Clayton Fritchey, former publicity director of the Democratic National Committee, serving the Kennedy administration at the United States mission to the United Nations, put his thoughts in writing at the president's request. Fritchey began by reminding the president of the growing numbers of women voters and the fact that in many suburbs the women were "virtually running local politics." Fritchey cautioned against thinking that these women failed to notice female appointments. "Consciously, or not," he argued, "women naturally seize on any evidence that tends to dispel the age-old image of an inferior sex," which accounted, said Fritchey, for Eleanor Roosevelt's popularity and influence. With Roosevelt gone (she had died in 1962), the administration lacked any "notable" or "really famous" women, like Anna Rosenberg, Frances Perkins, India Edwards, or Oveta Culp Hobby, in its service. Happily, Fritchey remarked, it would take fairly few appointments "to create a favorable new impression." Fritchey recommended the appointment of an assistant attorney general ("the woods are full of capable women lawyers"), either a White House special assistant or an assistant secretary of com-

merce specializing in consumer affairs, another women ambassador, and a new secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, "the ideal post." Appointment of an "outstanding Negro woman" would help as well. Such a program would guarantee the president favorable publicity—politically, it was a case of "everything to gain and nothing to lose," according to Fritchey. In addition, such a strategy was equitable. He urged speedy action "to avoid the appearance of political motivation."^[25] Although he had personally solicited Fritchey's memorandum, Kennedy ignored the advice. He also disregarded the counsel of Emanuel Celler, the powerful chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. Celler, who abhorred the Equal Rights Amendment, considered appointments an appropriate way to elevate the status of women, and he had written twice to chide the president for failing to name women to the bench.^[26]

The Kennedy record of appointments that provoked these complaints did compare unfavorably with that of his predecessors, but not overmuch. Kennedy made only ten Senate-confirmed appointments of women to policy-making executive and judicial posts, where in a comparable period Truman, who won extravagant praise for his record, had made fifteen, and Eisenhower fourteen. No president, Kennedy included, utilized the talents of women significantly. Women held 2.4 percent of all executive positions in the Kennedy administration, the same percentage they had held under the two previous presidents.^[27]

But the problem was more than mere numbers. Kennedy also neglected visible appointments, becoming, moreover, the first president since Herbert Hoover never to have had a woman in his cabinet. He also appointed fewer "first women" to positions formerly held exclusively by men, thus forfeiting the good publicity that kind of nomination always received. Kennedy's admirers had anticipated that he would exceed the performance of his predecessors; their expectations were unmet, and they responded with vocal protests.^[28]

But the displeasure Kennedy elicited came more from his neglect of women party leaders than from his record. These leaders had expected to control appointments of women, as they had in the Roosevelt and Truman years. Thwarted, they resented both their loss of influence and their lack of access to

the president. India Edwards remarked that, with the Kennedy administration, "there was no one at the DNC . . . who had any influence . . . when it came to women's affairs."^[29] Emma Guffey Miller voiced dismay over the exclusion of Price from White House inner circles: "The administration has been lax in recognizing Democratic women. . . . In the Roosevelt and Truman Administrations, the Vice Chairman [and head of women's affairs] was always consulted when women were being named to important posts, but now all Margaret Price knows is what she sees in the newspapers. This is not going to help the party."^[30]

Indeed, the White House appointment procedures excluded Price, as Kennedy broke away from past methods of operation and instituted an ongoing, systematic talent hunt for "the best and the brightest." "Kennedy," wrote Theodore Sorensen, "wanted a ministry of talent." Both before the inauguration and after, the Kennedy search for people to staff his administration claimed to ignore considerations of campaign contributions or political benefits in favor of ability. The president would not, Sorensen boasted, "name a women or a Negro to the Cabinet merely for the sake of show."^[31] A decision to seek excellence did not, of course, automatically exclude women (or blacks); clearly, women (and blacks) could be found among the "best and brightest" minds in the nation. Yet the process Kennedy created to find his appointees not only omitted Margaret Price and insulted Democratic Party women, but it also actually worked against potential women nominees.^[32]

Because the Kennedy staff conducted the search from the White House, women lost the use of traditional procedures which had been sensitive to the political utility of women party workers, and which had included a well-established role for them to play in appointments. Except for minor patronage positions, the White House paid no attention whatever to the DNC, figuring that it would not be a source of likely candidates, male or female, and suggestions sent by Congress members, too, were usually discarded.^[33] Dan Fenn, who headed the talent search, observed: "It is a rare guy who comes up through a party or campaign organization who can be Assistant Secretary of Defense for Procurement." This view represented a departure from the position of earlier administrations, which often filled such posts with party faithful. The talent search Fenn

conducted instituted no compensatory method of including women; Fenn said he experienced no pressure at all to pay special attention to the appointment of women, evidence that Price was not playing her traditional role.^[34]

Women, moreover, were not likely to be found in the places the Kennedy staff did look. The search centered on elite universities, boards and executives suites of major corporations, and prestigious law firms, where women were few in number. This effective reduction of the pool of acceptable women candidates made their selection proportionately less likely. The blatant discrimination that kept women out of high-level jobs did not have to come from the Kennedy team; it had already taken place.^[35]

The Kennedy team shared a bias against women, to be sure. A memorandum from Dan Fenn concerning the post of commissioner of education listed Mary Bunting, the president of Radcliffe College, as eighth choice, citing as handicaps both her lack of public education experience and her sex.^[36] Fenn would later explain that he had viewed her gender as a drawback because of a "silly social assumption," which he shared, that women were less likely to have managerial talent and staff would be unhappy to work under a female supervisor.^[37]

It was improbable, however, that Kennedy was more prejudiced than Truman or Eisenhower had been. Kennedy's appointment of Janet Travell as his personal physician and the testimony of Esther Peterson, whom he named assistant secretary of labor, Representative Edith Green, who managed his campaign in Oregon, and Senator Maurine Neuberger (D-Oreg.) argue against the premise put forth by some writers that the reason Kennedy did not appoint women was that he categorically disliked working with them and failed to respect their ability or judgment.^[38] Bill Lawrence, a journalist who had been president of the National Press Club, complained that Kennedy pressured him repeatedly to get the club to admit women journalists as members, a change Lawrence opposed.^[39] More plausibly it was the Kennedy search method, rather than an overt Kennedy intention, that excluded women more completely than in previous administrations.

Nothing impelled Kennedy to adopt a strategy of recognizing women voters through appointments. His association with the

DNC, which emphasized political patronage, differed from that of former presidents and their national committees. Kennedy's political organization had been largely an independent creation, based on developing contacts in local areas and run by close personal associates. With no particular attachment to the DNC, he had little reason to rely on its officers for counsel. In fact, the power of both national committees had begun generally to decline as primaries and television advertising assumed an ever greater role in candidate selection. In addition, Margaret Price was herself deferential, unwilling to press her views on Kennedy or threaten retaliation for being overlooked. (When Kennedy, for example, declined to address the biennial Campaign Conference for Democratic Women, a gathering of more than three thousand, Price accepted the decision; only when India Edwards wrote to the president threatening to cancel the meeting did Kennedy capitulate.) But also, as a member of the reform wing of the Democratic party in Michigan, Price felt little commitment to the patronage aspect of party politics. Viewing herself less as an advocate for women within the Democratic party than an advocate among women for the Democratic party, she did not work as hard for women's appointments as Edwards had.^[40] "The surest way for a group to shut itself out of the appointment process is for it to blunder into a strategy of reticence," one political scientist has observed—which is just what Price unwittingly did.^[41]

But appointments for women fell by the wayside primarily because Kennedy preferred another route: the fulfillment of the agenda of the Women's Bureau coalition of women's liberal and labor organizations, a course charted by Women's Bureau director Esther Peterson. The implementation of the Women's Bureau program constituted a New Frontier for women. Unlike token appointments, the new plan directly addressed the problem of women's status in American society, and its impact was far-reaching.

Women's Bureau Ascendancy

Throughout the fifteen-year struggle over equal pay legislation and the Equal Rights Amendment, the members of the Women's

Bureau coalition had looked to the bureau to provide, in the words of the second bureau director Frieda Miller, both "factual information and leadership."^[42] In general, the "leadership" the bureau provided was disappointing. Although the bureau accepted the mandate, and although it saw itself as the bulwark against "extremist feminist" organizations that promoted the "so-called Equal Rights Amendment," none of the bureau's first three directors had been in a position to provide effective direction to the bureau's supporters. In 1961 the situation finally changed. During the Kennedy administration, thanks to the president's interest in an activist program and his reliance on the team in the Labor Department, the Women's Bureau at last assumed the role it had claimed for the previous decades.

Directors of the Women's Bureau had always been low-level appointees. Mary Anderson, the bureau's first chief, received her position from a Democratic president and then served three Republican presidents; none sought her advice. In Franklin Roosevelt's administration, Anderson was far outclassed by Eleanor Roosevelt, Molly Dewson, and Frances Perkins.^[43] As secretary of labor, Perkins downplayed women's issues in order to minimize her own vulnerability, and the Great Depression made special claims for women inopportune with so many male "breadwinners" out of work. Anderson played a small role within the Roosevelt administration.

Frieda Miller had come to the Women's Bureau in 1944 from the post of industrial commissioner for the state of New York, a job she had had since 1938. Her background included little lobbying experience. Although she had been executive secretary of the Philadelphia Women's Trade Union League in the early twenties and a factory inspector for the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union before becoming the head of the Women in Industry Division of New York State in 1929, she also had no influence with labor unions. Once in federal office, Miller indulged her predilection for the international aspects of the bureau's work, including extensive participation in the activities of the International Labor Organization. Because she was interested in maintaining peace, she restrained assertive behavior on the part of the bureau's advisory committees, comprising women's organizations and labor union groups. Tru-

man, on record as favoring the Equal Rights Amendment but unwilling to alienate labor groups, relied on appointments of women to let him steer clear of the dispute. He had little to say to Miller, and her role of policy maker within the Truman administration was minor.^[44]

Alice Leopold's problems were even more acute than Miller's, whom she succeeded in 1953. Leopold, too, had been a state executive (secretary of the state of Connecticut), but unlike Miller she had had few connections to working-class women or their middle-class protectors. When Leopold took over, she saw no need to convene the bureau's advisory groups on a regular basis, and so communications with the Women's Bureau coalition members became sporadic and formal. In addition, her apparent willingness to soften the bureau's anti-ERA stance made the coalition distrustful of her motives, with many inside and outside the bureau believing that Leopold's primary interest concerned professional women rather than the lower-paid working women the bureau had traditionally championed.^[45] Leopold could hardly function as a good leader of the Women's Bureau coalition, or serve as an effective liaison among the various groups supporting equal pay legislation. In 1954 Labor Secretary James P. Mitchell alienated women's organizations further when he "promoted" Leopold nominally to be his special assistant for "Women's Affairs," because the Republicans linked the change to a suggestion that the Women's Bureau, the symbol and vehicle of the protection of women, be abolished.^[46]

The Kennedy administration took a different tack, elevating the position of Women's Bureau director and granting her a genuine role in policy making—a departure having its roots in the Kennedy administration's affinity for its labor constituency. Kennedy's liberalism had found its most consistent expression in relationship to labor issues. While he was a member of the House, representing a working-class district of Boston, his voting record on bills of interest to labor had been virtually perfect: 100 percent for four of the six years, 90 percent and 88 percent in the remaining two.^[47] As a member of the House Labor Committee, Kennedy had also taken an active part in opposing the Taft-Hartley Act, an unusual step for a first-term congressman. Although he butted heads with some union lead-

ers for refusing to oppose all reforms, he spoke effectively in favor of the union shop, industry-wide bargaining, and the right to strike. Unable to get Taft-Hartley modified, he voted against the final bill and supported President Truman's unsuccessful veto of it.^[48]

In the Senate, where his ties to a working-class constituency were looser, Kennedy continued to display commitment to rank-and-file workers as well as to the concerns of union leaders, winning respect even when he took an opposing view. As chair of the Senate Subcommittee on Labor, Kennedy deftly conducted hearings on a bill to extend minimum wage coverage, confronting Eisenhower's labor secretary, James Mitchell, and publicly forging an alliance with George Meany on the issue. In March 1958 Kennedy played a crucial role in enabling Walter Reuther, the president of the United Auto Workers, to testify before the McClellan Committee investigating corruption in labor unions ("labor rackets"); in response, Reuther labeled him "a real saint towards the UAW." Kennedy won still more publicity as the author of legislation to reform the practices that the rackets committee had uncovered, a strategy Meany opposed and tried to head off by instituting internal policing procedures. When Kennedy insisted on going through with a bill to require labor unions to disclose their finances, Meany publicly rebuked him. Both agreed to negotiate their differences privately, and Meany subsequently lauded Kennedy's openness to and respect for opposing arguments. Kennedy included the recommendations of AFL-CIO special counsel Arthur Goldberg in the next version of the bill, and the relationship between the senator and his labor constituents prospered. At the opening of the 1960 Democratic presidential convention, Communications Workers chief Joseph A. Beirne told a reporter that a majority of the AFL-CIO union heads favored Kennedy.^[49] After Kennedy's nomination, organized labor pursued its customarily vigorous support for the Democratic candidate in a presidential election.

Kennedy named Arthur Goldberg secretary of labor, and Goldberg almost immediately assumed a unique role in the administration. One of the stars of the cabinet, Goldberg impressed Kennedy with his intellect and his professional competence. Goldberg had joined the Kennedy campaign early, so the

president had no doubt of his loyalty, and he consulted him on a wide range of domestic policy issues. Moreover, Goldberg surrounded himself with extremely capable associates; AFL-CIO people filled out his staff, and Goldberg worked hard to maintain not only his fine reputation at the White House but also his close connection to George Meany. In August 1962 Meany commented that at no time had there been closer cooperation between the labor movement and the administration in power.^[50]

As part of that alliance, John Kennedy named Esther Peterson director of the Women's Bureau. A native of Provo, Utah, raised in a Republican Mormon family, Peterson had been introduced to the labor movement at Columbia University in 1929, when she enrolled at Teachers College for graduate training after receiving a bachelor's degree in physical education from Brigham Young University. During the 1930s she taught in schools for workers, including the Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women Workers in Industry, and helped to organize teachers' unions in Massachusetts. In 1939 she joined the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union (ACW) as assistant director for education under the wing of ACW leaders Sidney Hillman and Jacob Potofsky; in 1944 the ACW sent her to Washington as its legislative representative. As a labor lobbyist, she participated in the National Committee on Equal Pay, the National Committee on the Status of Women, and the Labor Advisory Council of the Women's Bureau. She also initiated her association with labor lawyer Arthur Goldberg and John Kennedy, in 1947 a freshman representative from Massachusetts, whom she was assigned to lobby. In 1948 she went abroad with her husband, Oliver Peterson, a labor attaché in the Foreign Service, and spent the next decade participating in the international union movement in Sweden and Belgium. When she returned to the United States in 1957, Peterson became a legislative representative in the Industrial Union Department of the AFL-CIO, which Arthur Goldberg served as special counsel, and she resumed her professional relationship with Kennedy, now a senator and a member of the Senate Labor and Public Welfare Committee. Peterson had a reputation as a consummate lobbyist; she in turn admired Kennedy's willingness to ask questions

and his ability to absorb answers and approach issues in new ways. Following labor's position, while in the Senate John Kennedy supported equal pay legislation and refused to endorse the Equal Rights Amendment, citing the hazard to protective labor laws.^[51]

Peterson joined Kennedy's campaign as soon as he announced his intention to run for the presidency. Robert Kennedy, the candidate's brother and campaign manager, offered Peterson a full-time campaign staff job organizing labor support, but Peterson declined because family illness restricted her freedom to travel. She continued to supply advice in an informal way, however, and at the convention she worked with Kennedy forces to swing her home state of Utah into the Kennedy column. Immediately after the convention, Peterson began to work with Arthur Goldberg at the campaign headquarters under Lawrence O'Brien and Ralph Dungan, making sure that Kennedy acknowledged labor at every turn.^[52]

After the election, Ralph Dungan asked her what position she wanted. Because of her interest in working women, and because the National Consumers League had asked her to, Peterson chose the Women's Bureau. Peterson's appointment had the support of virtually every member of the Women's Bureau coalition. Mary Anderson, the bureau's first director and the founder of the National Committee on Equal Pay, sent the president-elect a letter, signed by fourteen other women representing major women's organizations, seeking Peterson's selection; the letter argued that under Peterson's direction "the true purposes of the Bureau" would be realized.^[53] Louise Stitt, chairman of the board of the National Consumers League (NCL), started a letter-writing campaign on behalf of Peterson, an NCL board member. With the backing, and that of the labor unions (she was the only woman on George Meany's list of desirable nominees), her selection was assured, even though the BPW, not a traditional member of the Women's Bureau coalition, preferred a different candidate. Moreover, Goldberg saw to it that Peterson got more than the directorship of a minor bureau; within eight months, Congress created a new assistant secretary position for Peterson to hold with the Women's Bureau post. With her assumption of

that position, Peterson became the highest-ranking woman in the Kennedy administration.

The assistant secretary post had the "growing role of women in the work force of the nation" as its particular purview, anticipating that the number of women workers would be likely to grow twice as fast as that of male workers. As assistant secretary, Peterson had charge of the Bureau of Labor Standards, the Bureau of Employees' Compensation, and the Employees' Compensation Appeal Board. Her responsibilities therefore included policy decisions concerning male as well as female workers.^[54] With more actual authority than any previous bureau director, she was able to provide to the Women's Bureau coalition effective leadership unprecedented in the history of the bureau's existence. The bureau took as its domain twenty-four million working women—a third of all American women—concentrated in clerical, service, and factory work. More than half of them were married, and one in four had children; on average they earned 60 percent what male workers did. When she came to office in 1961, Peterson did not create a new agenda—she simply sought the implementation of the program that labor women had long supported: equal pay legislation and a national commission on women.^[55]

With her program and her resources, Peterson eclipsed Margaret Price and her proposals for the appointment of women. DNC member Emma Guffey Miller, who also resented Peterson's opposition to the ERA, viewed the situation with utter disgust. Writing to congratulate Katie Louchheim on her new position at the Department of State (to a slightly less trivial post than she had received at the beginning of the administration), Miller said: "We women are very proud of you and wish the President would name more women to important positions, especially women who are for women instead of the Esther Peterson type as she goes out of her way to do the contrary thing."^[56]

The Kennedy years marked the transition from a procedure of marginal utility for women—token appointments—to one that addressed women's social and economic position more directly. Kennedy neglected appointments of women, but he was protected from charges of indifference by the establishment of

the President's Commission on the Status of Women and administration pursuit of equal pay legislation. On the forty-second anniversary of the suffrage amendment, August 26, 1962, Peterson warned that the Republicans were "planning to take a crack at the Administration" for the dearth of women appointees. She was unperturbed, however, and assured the White House that the interim report of the new commission "would draw the fangs of any such attack." The British publication The Economist, which commended Kennedy for his creation of the commission, accurately observed that "many women felt that Mr. Kennedy could have supported their cause more vigorously by appointing a woman to his cabinet as his recent predecessors had done."^[57] But Peterson was essentially correct. Following her advice, Kennedy got credit for a substantial record on women's issues. Moreover, the program Peterson laid out for him had greater potential to affect the lives of American women than had all the female appointments of the previous fifteen years.^[58]

6
The Equal Pay Act of 1963: Compromise and Victory

The fight over equal pay legislation in the Kennedy years took place in a very different context from the earlier battles. The politics of the time welcomed new programs, and equal pay fitted into the larger program of the Kennedy administration both to revitalize the economy and to draw upon the resources women offered. By now, the question of whether working women would take jobs away from male breadwinners and set off a new depression had been answered: women worked in jobs different from those of men—jobs men didn't want.

Given the sexual segregation of the workplace, few women would benefit from equal pay legislation, but prevailing sentiment favored giving those few the protection they deserved. In the last years of the Eisenhower administration, when social and economic obstacles had dissipated, equal pay bills fell victim not only to the objections of opponents but also to differences among supporters. In the Kennedy administration, the Women's Bureau gained the strength to lead the equal pay battle effectively. Its director, Esther Peterson, was both an assistant secretary of labor and a former lobbyist for the AFL-CIO. As such, she had authority within the administration and with women's organizations and labor unions, advantages her predecessors had lacked. Both context and structure now favored the enactment of the first federal law to bar discrimination against women by private employers.

Since the Women's Bureau coalition had begun its campaign for equal pay legislation after World War II, the role of women in the paid labor force had changed and expanded dramatically. During the 1950s the demand for female workers had bur-

geoned, the result of growth in the clerical and service occupations, which employed women almost exclusively. Yet at the same time, the proportion of young single women seeking employment in the United States declined. The low birth rate of the 1930s meant that there were fewer young women in their twenties to take all the jobs designated as "women's work." Moreover, many young women now elected to go to college rather than work, and more of the others were getting married, thus causing the pool of available single women in their twenties to evaporate further. Because the younger married women tended to stay home to care for their infants—a commonplace phenomenon with the explosion in the birthrate after World War II—employers had to forgo their preference for young, unencumbered female workers and offer jobs to older, married women with school-age children. Smaller families, the appearance of convenience foods, and the availability of various household appliances made it easier for wives and mothers to choose to work outside the home. The GI bill, which offered men incentives to stay in school, also encouraged employment of married women to supplement meager family allowances. Between 1950 and 1960, the number of wives at work increased by 42 percent, from 21.6 percent in 1950 to 30.6 percent in 1960. As of March 1963, 41.5 percent of mothers with children between the ages of six and seventeen worked for wages, compared with 30.3 percent in 1950, a 37 percent increase. Mothers with children under the age of six raised their labor force participation rate from 14 percent in 1951 to 22.5 percent in 1963, a 61 percent jump. By 1961 approximately twenty-four million women were working, 34 percent of all workers.^[1] The Department of Labor predicted that by 1970 this number would swell to thirty million. One Labor Department economist in 1963 stated that the growing incidence of married women workers represented "the most significant employment trend in the country."^[2]

The employment of wives resulted, observers detected, in more egalitarian marriages and in greater political participation of women, but it did not expand women's employment choices, nor did it raise their wages. Women workers still tended to be clerks, service workers, factory operatives, domestic workers, nurses, and teachers. In 1960, the wages of full-time year-

round women workers averaged only 60.6 percent those of men, down from 63.6 percent in 1957. Black women fared worst of all: their earnings were 42 percent of men's.^[3]

Organizing Support

Against this backdrop, the Women's Bureau staff organized the quest for equal pay legislation in the new Congress. The outgoing Eisenhower administration, which for eight years had supported equal pay bills in vain, again submitted a proposal before Kennedy's inauguration. Immediately after, Peterson arranged for meetings with Democratic congresswomen, representatives of organized labor, and the members of the National Committee on Equal Pay to review the legislative situation.^[4] The retirement of Graham Barden, the unfriendly chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, made the situation much more tractable: his replacement, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., a black Democrat from New York, favored the bill.

As before, the conflicts about the measure focused on two items: the coverage of employees and the mode of enforcement. Several Democratic congresswomen, including Edith Green (D-Oreg.), had introduced bills modeled on the broad coverage of the National Labor Relations Act (which applied to industries "affecting" interstate commerce). These bills granted enforcement authority to the secretary of labor. Two Republican legislators, Jessica Weis and Katharine St. George (both from New York), had introduced bills modeled on the narrower Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA, which covered employers "engaged in" interstate commerce). Their proposals provided for judicial enforcement. The AFL-CIO had cleared the Green bill before its introduction, and equal pay advocates within the Department of Labor initially wanted the administration to support it as well, a course of action urged by experienced staffers to eliminate the problem of competing bills.^[5]

Under the direction of the Women's Bureau, opinion quickly coalesced around a compromise proposal. The administration bill would adopt the FLSA-based coverage of the Republican bills to facilitate administration by the Wage and Hour Division

of the Department of Labor, which oversaw the FLSA; however, it would retain the provision of the Green bill that gave "cease and desist" powers to the secretary of labor, as the AFL-CIO wanted. The Solicitor's Office of the Labor Department agreed to draft the bill.^[6] In the meantime, the Women's Bureau set out to accumulate statistical evidence establishing the need for federal legislation—ostensibly a major impediment in the past. J. A. Beirne, president of the Communications Workers of America, wrote to Secretary of Labor Arthur Goldberg in February 1961 informing him that at past hearings the union had been "tremendously impressed by the lack of authoritative data on male-female wage differentials for workers doing the same work in a given plant or office location." Internal studies by the CWA showed no such wage differentials, according to Beirne; rather, discrimination took place in women's not being permitted to apply for the higher-paying jobs. Beirne expressed hesitation about supporting an equal pay bill without such data, attributing past failures to this omission. Beirne recommended that the government act to equalize employment opportunities in the event that widespread wage differentials could not be found.^[7]

So, while the AFL-CIO studied the administration's draft bill, the Women's Bureau wrote to dozens of women's organizations and labor unions, asking them to use their resources to supply specific examples of wage discrimination. Reluctant to employ instances only from unionized plants, Peterson requested the AFL-CIO's organization director to have his staff look for cases from nonunion shops. In addition, promising confidentiality, the Women's Bureau wrote to state labor departments, hoping for instances from adjudicated cases or settlements. Finally, Peterson wrote to women who had complained to the bureau about wage discrimination in the past, asking them about their present situation and soliciting leads to cases.^[8]

With the Women's Bureau now actively engaged in shoring up the coalition and gathering data, Arthur Goldberg decided to turn over to the bureau the entire lobbying effort on the bill as well. The department's Legislative Liaison Office had no particular interest in it—it had been around "forever"—and he assumed the bureau would work harder at getting the bill through Con-

gress. In March 1961 Esther Peterson hired Morag Simchak, a lobbyist for the United Rubber Workers, to take charge.^[9]

The White House Legislative Liaison Office also left the effort to the Women's Bureau. John Kennedy had supported equal pay legislation during his tenure in Congress, but without vigor. He introduced a bill in 1951 at the request of former House representative Mary T. Norton, who was then working as an aide to the secretary of labor, but did no more than that. In 1957, when he was chairman of the labor subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, he cosponsored an equal pay measure with Senator Wayne Morse and others but did not hold hearings on the bill despite a request to do so. A confidential listing of the standing of White House legislative proposals omitted equal pay legislation under both "major" and "minor" headings. Thus the "administration effort" on behalf of equal pay legislation became more and more localized in the Women's Bureau office at the Department of Labor.^[10]

The Women's Bureau managed at least to bring its regular constituents into line. The AFL-CIO disliked the narrowed, FLSA-based coverage of the bill, but acquiesced. The National Committee on Equal Pay, composed of many of Peterson's old colleagues, including Caroline Davis of the United Automobile Workers, Mary Anderson, the first director of the Women's Bureau, Helen Berthelot of the Communications Workers, and Olya Margolin of the National Council of Jewish Women, quickly concurred. By mutual agreement, Edith Green, who had sponsored equal pay legislation ever since her election to the House of Representatives, was named chief sponsor in that body. Wayne Morse (D-Oreg.), an originator of equal pay legislation in 1945, and Patrick McNamara (D-Mich.), whose subcommittee would consider the bill, would introduce the bill in the Senate.^[11]

Although the Department of Labor and the White House expressed solid support for the bill, other administration officials tried, albeit unsuccessfully, to block the measure. Under Secretary of Labor W. Willard Wirtz wrote Goldberg in early May 1961: "Arthur: I am not in favor of this proposal. I think it is utterly unrealistic and that if such a bill were adopted it would be the worst failure since the 18th Amendment. Nor am I per-

suaded that this is either necessary or good public relations." The Bureau of the Budget, too, expressed reservations about the need for such a bill and delayed its approval while awaiting cost estimates.^[12]

Nevertheless, by the end of July Esther Peterson was able to write to AFL-CIO legislative director George Riley that "things are moving along at last."^[13] The administration bill was sent to the House and Senate in August 1961. In his transmittal letter to the president of the Senate, Goldberg observed that unequal wages had an adverse impact on both purchasing power and worker morale, which in turn hindered production, a key concern of the Kennedy administration. Equal pay, Goldberg contended, would prevent employers from using women to undercut the wages of male workers and would bring the workplace closer to the ideals of American justice.^[14]

Equal pay legislation also received the endorsement of the President's Commission on the Status of Women, a move Peterson orchestrated. At its first meeting in February 1962, Eleanor Roosevelt, the commission chairman, commented: "I should think this was a fairly safe thing to take up,"^[15] and she told the press that the commission believed that unequal wages for comparable work were "contrary to the concept of equality and justice in which we believe."^[16]

While the Women's Bureau staff shepherded the bill through legislative channels, data in support of the bill began to come in from the Women's Bureau constituents. The American Association of University Women produced a study of men and women in executive positions that disclosed discriminating pay practices in many companies. Caroline Davis of the UAW supplied material about a recent strike that resulted in the reduction of pay differentials between men and women, not to zero, but to ten cents an hour. Hattie Trazenfeld of the BPW reported on cases collected from that organization's membership, and the Women's Bureau discovered specific wage differentials in about a dozen union contracts from 1959 to 1961.^[17] Peterson herself sought cases as she traveled around the country. At one point, a manager told her that unequal pay scales were "equitable." When, over coffee, she pressed him for his meaning, he offered lame justifications, which she contended she did not understand.

Finally he said to her: "Mrs. Peterson, don't do this to me. You know we pay them less because we can get them for less," an explanation Peterson often repeated in discussions with members of Congress.^[18]

Thus, proponents were well prepared for the hearings that took place in March 1962, before a select subcommittee on labor headed by Herbert Zelenko (D-N.Y.) of the House Education and Labor Committee. Arthur Goldberg led off, addressing himself to the principle of equal pay legislation, then Peterson offered individual stories and surveys of wages in particular cities, including a Women's Bureau study of work orders for public employment revealing 120 job requests that offered men higher wages than women. Representatives from both sides of the aisle spoke in favor, as did delegates of various labor unions who called for the bill's enactment in order to bring nonunion shops and less enlightened unions than their own into line with the principle. Emma Guffey Miller, now chairman of the National Woman's party, supported the bill as befitted a devoted Democrat but spent most of her testimony arguing for the Equal Rights Amendment. (Privately, Miller called the measure "the so-called equal pay bill"; another NWP member characterized it as "a smart dodge for the people who want to spike the movement for real equality.")^[19] Katherine Peden, president of the National Federation of Business and Professional Women's Clubs, appeared for that organization's 175,000 members and offered examples of unequal pay from BPW files. The American Association of University Women and the National Councils of Jewish, Catholic, and Negro Women also sent contingents. The National Association of Manufacturers did not attend but filed a statement affirming its belief in equal pay and its opposition to federal "intervention." Additional hearings also took place in New York, where such notables as Eleanor Roosevelt and Bette Davis testified, along with several more organizations. No one offered opposing arguments.^[20]

A clean bill incorporating changes suggested in the hearings received unanimous endorsement from the House committee. The administrative enforcement provision had been lost, which irritated the AFL-CIO, and a section excluding employers with fewer than twenty-five employees was added, but the commit-

tee included a new provision expressly forbidding employers to lower the wage rates of male employees to comply. During the House debate on the rule, Representative Katharine St. George (R-N.Y.) declared that she did not see how anyone could oppose the legislation: "It would be like being against motherhood."^[21] Nevertheless, many representatives had specific objections. Chief among them was the language of the key clause, requiring "equal pay for comparable work." In response, Katharine St. George proposed substituting the phrase "equal pay for equal work."

Bills concerning equal pay for women had always used the terminology "comparable work" requiring "comparable skills," rather than "equal work." Opponents of the bill objected that comparability would prove virtually impossible to determine, but advocates feared that "equal" would mean "identical," and that "slight and inconsequential" differences might be used to justify disparate wages. Few state equal pay laws applied only to identical jobs, and General Order 16, promulgated by the War Labor Board in 1942, spoke of "comparable quality and quantity of work" in authorizing equal wages for women workers. Supporters argued that formal job analysis and rating procedures, carried on in cooperation with labor and management, would establish "comparability" if necessary. This battle went to the conservatives, however: Republicans heavily supported St. George's amendment to change the wording, and it passed 138 to 104.^[22]

During the House debate on the measure, several representatives offered additional amendments. Republican representative Charles Goodell (New York) moved to eliminate the provision prohibiting compliance through a lowering of wage rates, citing the "panic" of retailers, and the amendment passed 132 to 116. An amendment to add the words or race to the bill everywhere that sex appeared, offered by Charles S. Joelson (D-N.J.), was disallowed on a point of order, raised by Edith Green, as not being "germane." At the close of the debate the House passed the bill by voice vote. No one had spoken on the floor against it.^[23]

House approval surprised and alarmed business groups. Unaware of the new impetus behind the bill, they had assumed it

would meet the same fate it had before. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, realizing that it had been remiss in failing to take concerted action against the bill in the House, hastily organized a campaign to bottle up the bill in the Senate committee. "Nobody really was taking the bill very seriously, but suddenly it has become a reality," a chamber spokesman told the Wall Street Journal . The Journal attributed the bill's success to administration efforts and quoted a Senate Democrat as saying, "The Kennedy administration really wants this. They can build this up as a staggering social achievement."^[24]

As part of its eleventh-hour lobbying effort, the chamber devoted an issue of its bulletin to equal pay, assuring business leaders that their fear of equal pay legislation did not mean they were prejudiced. The chamber asserted that there were in fact many arguments against "coercive" federal power: for one, pay differentials often resulted from the "added costs" of employing women, caused by their supposedly higher rates of absenteeism and turnover and by state laws requiring special benefits such as rest periods. Federal legislation to compel equal pay would undoubtedly create more problems than it would solve, the chamber insisted. That the misbegotten bill had gotten as far as it did the chamber attributed to "Mrs. Peterson's twelve-hour day."^[25]

In their attempt to stall action in the Senate, business groups confronted the chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Labor, Pat McNamara, and demanded hearings. McNamara refused. The chamber finally found an ally in the ranking minority member of the Senate Labor and Public Works Committee, Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz.), who succeeded in blocking committee approval. When McNamara finally agreed to amend the bill to permit employers to reflect "added costs" in wage differentials, Goldwater lent his support. Because it was too late to win committee endorsement, in early October McNamara offered the bill as a rider to a State Department construction bill already before the Senate, and it passed.^[26]

Although the equal pay bill had for the first time won approval in both houses of Congress, McNamara's strategy ultimately failed. Because the Senate bill differed from the House bill, the legislation had to go to a conference committee. But the Senate

action had created parliamentary problems: the bill to which McNamara appended the equal pay measure had been reported out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, whereas the House Education and Labor Committee had handled equal pay. With only nine days between the Senate vote and adjournment, committee jurisdiction could not be resolved and the bill died. The belated opposition of the business community, by stalling the bill in the Senate Committee for so long, resulted once more in the bill's demise. But this time the new backers of the bill were not so easily undone.^[27]

Compromise and Victory

Peterson, Simchak, and the Women's Bureau staff started on a new bill immediately. Taking into account the various amendments of the administration bill offered in each house and the recommendations of the AFL-CIO, the new draft, again modeled on FLSA coverage, included the following provisions: enforcement by the secretary of labor, exemption of employers with fewer than twenty-five employees, prohibitions against compliance by wage cutting and against labor unions seeking unequal wage scales, use of the language "equal work" rather than "comparable work," a gradual elimination of wage differentials, and exclusion of offending firms from government contracts.

The draft bill represented a compromise. The AFL-CIO objected to FLSA coverage and to permitting employers to bring wages into line gradually. The Department of Labor disliked substituting "equal work" for "comparable work." Yet advocates of the legislation took the position that, for the moment, half a loaf was better than none.^[28]

With the replacement of Secretary of Labor Arthur Goldberg by Under Secretary W. Willard Wirtz in September 1962, however, new problems appeared from within the administration. Goldberg had strongly backed the bill; Wirtz opposed it. With Wirtz running the shop, other equal pay opponents became bold. In response to a request for an opinion on the new bill, Walter Heller, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA), notified the Bureau of the Budget that the council objected to the bill, citing a lack of "convincing evidence" and the

possibility that "economic" reasons, such as the "added costs" of hiring women, might account for such differentials as did exist. Heller based his letter on an internal memorandum, written by Norman Simler of the CEA staff. Simler, who warned the council that fighting the bill was like "opposing virtue," accused the Labor Department of supporting the bill for its vote-getting appeal and failing to document its contention that women were indeed paid less than men, relying on "common knowledge" rather than hard data. Simler found the bill more objectionable now that it referred to "equal work" rather than "comparable work"; he doubted that many men and women actually did "equal" jobs and feared employers could therefore easily evade enforcement efforts. He predicted that the Department would ultimately create another expensive bureaucracy that would not succeed in eliminating pay discrimination. "But even if it [the bill] could be administered and enforced," Simler argued, "no evidence is presented demonstrating a need for it."^[29]

Peterson responded aggressively to the CEA's contentions, asserting that Heller's reasoning revealed "a complete lack of understanding of not only the political but the economic aspects of the bill." After a telephone conversation with Peterson, Heller agreed "to take another look at it," and to have Simler call her as well. Her conversation with Simler disclosed that his research had been limited; he had neither looked at the report of the committee hearings nor asked the Women's Bureau for additional information. The day following Peterson's conversation with the two, the Council of Economic Advisers withdrew its letter to the Budget Bureau.^[30]

Both Simler and Heller remained unpersuaded, however. In a memorandum for the council, Simler summarized the evidence Peterson had offered to Congress in 1962. Although he included surveys of job-hiring orders with double pay scales, labor-management contracts that applied wage rates by sex, two private surveys of employers totaling more than two thousand firms of which one-third admitted to double pay standards, and a survey of salary schedules by the National Education Association showing one salary rate for men and and another for women teachers in sixteen school districts, he insisted that the differing wage rates could reflect disparities in job content that

the titles failed to disclose. He concluded: "What this all adds up to is that the Labor Department does not have one shred of evidence, except possibly the 120 cases of job orders . . . , that there is discrimination in wage rates based on sex where men and women perform equal work on jobs requiring equal skill in the same place of employment."^[31] Still, Heller said, the Council of Economic Advisers would not enter "objection" to the bill.^[32]

Disturbed by the new opposition from within the administration, Peterson dealt with Wirtz directly. In a February 1963 meeting, he objected to the costs of enforcing the equal pay law. Perceiving a lack of sympathy on his part for women affected by such discrimination, Peterson argued that his objection to administrative enforcement would embarrass the administration vis-à-vis unions and women's organizations. Moreover, the amount of money requested for enforcement was small in comparison to other allocations. "It does not seem unreasonable," Peterson maintained, "to spend approximately the same amount of money the government now spends on paper clips and stapling machines in order to protect the pay of 24 million women members of the labor force." Peterson argued also from the political standpoint—that women felt that pay and job discrimination affected them seriously and that such a bill would impress groups such as the BPW, possibly breaking them away from their traditionally Republican allegiance. She recognized that the bill constituted only a first step for women: "This Bill will not give most of them real relief, since it does not give them equal opportunity." But it would point the way to future steps.^[33]

Peterson prevailed; the Bureau of the Budget finally advised that it would not obstruct the bill. Despite the continuing objections of Secretary Wirtz and CEA chairman Heller, Peterson carried the administration bill to the Hill on February 14, 1963, where it was introduced in the House by Edith Green and in the Senate by Pat McNamara.^[34] The prohibition against compliance by lowering wages had been omitted because McNamara believed the bill included the injunction implicitly. The Labor Department continued to amass better evidence of the bill's need, and the AFL-CIO Executive Council issued a statement calling for prompt action without detrimental amendments.

Frank Thompson, chairman of the House Select Subcommittee on Labor (who kept material on the bill filed under B for "Broads"), scheduled hearings for the middle of March, hoping that, in view of the extensive hearings held the previous year, testimony would be brief.^[35]

This time, business representatives organized early. The Chamber of Commerce urged its members to write or wire their representatives telling them that the bill would give the government "sweeping powers over industry" and make the secretary of labor "prosecutor, judge, and jury."^[36] Manufacturers' associations met with Labor Department officials and complained that the new bill did not take into account the "added costs" of hiring women or the fate of small manufacturers who would go out of business if they had to raise women's wages.^[37]

Representative Charles Goodell (R-N.Y.) sympathized with these complaints. Goodell himself believed the administration bill to be too vague; in conjunction with labor and industry representatives, particularly officials of Corning Glass Works, an important New York employer, Goodell offered a bill simply amending the Fair Labor Standards Act. As such, the bill contained no twenty-five employee test, it narrowed coverage by excluding all the exempted occupations included in section 13 of the FLSA, and it utilized the enforcement provisions of the FLSA, which meant that only the courts could compel employers to comply.^[38]

During the hearings in March and April, Peterson and the bureau's allies testified against Goodell's approach. Amending the FLSA would bring undesirable consequences, they said, particularly the unavailability of administrative enforcement and the exclusion of several categories of employees from coverage. The AFL-CIO representative argued that even the coverage of the administration bill (which followed the FLSA in affecting only employers "engaged in" commerce) fell short; the labor organization still preferred the broader scope of the National Labor Relations Act.^[39]

This time, four corporate executives spoke in opposition to any equal pay law, and five more submitted written statements. Their objections rested on the powers given the secretary of labor to "harass" businesses, the supposed added costs of hiring

women, the anticipated difficulty of assessing equality of work, and the lack of a need for federal legislation. Some firms, though, reflecting an awareness of the likelihood that some bill would pass, testified in favor of legislation if it were to be an amendment to the Fair Labor Standards Act.^[40]

Business opposition to the administration measure was much more vocal than it had been in the fifties, when the bill had failed without it. After the hearings, pressure mounted to assuage business fears by enacting equal pay legislation through revision of the Fair Labor Standards Act. Although the Department of Labor feared this proposal might open up the FLSA to other less desirable amendments, advantages became apparent. By way of compromise, the administration bill had limited coverage to employers with twenty-five or more employees; because the FLSA applied to all employers with two or more employees "engaged in commerce," amending the FLSA would actually increase by about three million the number of employees covered. With business objection so strong, Peterson and others feared that administrative enforcement would be lost in the legislative process anyway, and the FLSA provided established investigative practices that often resulted in voluntary compliance before court action became necessary. Goodell's bill had the recorded support of many Republicans; it appealed to legislators because it was "simple"—it did not require new procedures or machinery. The Department of Labor began to consider any other prospect of passage unlikely.^[41]

After close consultation with Peterson, Simchak and other Labor Department staff, the Senate and House committees decided to endorse amendment of the FLSA. On April 30, Pat McNamara introduced such a bill in the Senate, with Edith Green following in the House on May 6. Both bills prohibited discrimination on the basis of sex in the payment of wages for "equal work on jobs the performance of which requires equal skill, effort and responsibility, and are performed under similar working conditions," and neither permitted employers to lower wages rates to reach this goal. The act was to take effect one year from the date of passage. Both the House and the Senate committees reported the bills quickly and favorably, barely one week

after their introduction, despite an attempt by the Chamber of Commerce to instigate further hearings because of "inadequate" consideration of this approach in the earlier hearings.^[42] In response to the congressional committee reports, Peterson stated: "There are advantages and disadvantages to this FLSA route, but the decision was made by the Congress and we believe the bills as reported out of committee are good ones." With little debate, the Senate passed the bill on May 17.^[43]

Peterson had consulted with the AFL-CIO before consenting to Goodell's proposal, and, reluctantly, the organization supported the new bill.^[44] Writing to members of Congress, Andrew J. Biemiller, director of the Department of Legislation, asked for their vote in favor but observed that the bill did not meet even "minimum requirements for equal pay legislation" and cautioned against any further weakening amendments. Yet Biemiller also stated that the organization would support an amendment to delete a provision granting an extra one-year stay of the law in cases where the employees were covered by a union contract. The measures granted relief, claimed Biemiller, not to unions but to employers.^[45]

During the House debate at the end of May, few representatives spoke against the bill in general, although several offered specific amendments. Motions to forbid the secretary of labor to investigate without a written complaint and to permit employers to pass along "costs of hiring women" in wage differences both met defeat. Those amendments that were adopted did not eviscerate the bill: the House spelled out that wage differentials resulting from seniority, merit, or piece rate would not be illegitimate, and added a provision making labor unions culpable if they attempted to get an employer to agree to wage differentials based on sex. Many representatives commended the choice to amend the Fair Labor Standards Act over other methods of enactment. The bill in the House passed easily on May 23.^[46]

Senator McNamara, contradicting assertions made on the House floor, took pains to state for the record that the bill did not require "a pattern of violation" for an employer to be culpable and that the Senate did not construe "equal" to mean "identical." The Senate then concurred in the House amendments—

the final legislative action—on May 28. Thus, eighteen years after its initial proposal, an equal pay bill came before the president for his signature.^[47]

The long fight for an equal pay law culminated in a signing ceremony in the president's office on June 10, 1963, with several congresswomen, Wirtz, Peterson, Simchak, and Labor Department staff members, representatives of women's organizations, Mary Anderson, and Frances Perkins in attendance. In his remarks, drafted at the Labor Department, Kennedy observed that despite the work still to be done, the law represented a significant moment.^[48]

Although its focus was narrow, the Equal Pay Act marked the entrance of the federal government into the field of safeguarding the right of women to hold employment on the same basis as men. Traditionally, the business community had justified women's lower wages by claiming that women worked for "pin money," not for income to support their families. By making wage discrimination illegal, the federal government undermined this view and implicitly supported, for the first time, the contention that paid employment was consonant with a woman's obligations as wife and mother.^[49]

Women who had worked long and hard for equal pay legislation expressed deep gratitude to Peterson. Wrote Caroline Davis of the UAW:

It could never have happened without the tremendous effort put forth on your part and the work of the women in your U.S. Women's Bureau under your expert guidance. Believe me I know, because for 15 years that I have been on the staff of the UAW we have worked to secure passage of a law, and at a time had high expectations, only to have [them] dashed before we got very far. This is indeed a great accomplishment on your part and you can rightfully be very proud that your influence played the greatest part in securing this victory.^[50]

Indeed, the leadership of the Women's Bureau proved crucial. The bureau forged a compromise by persuading women's organizations and labor groups to accept a bill lacking features they had considered vital and by quashing disunity in the administration. In its final form, the equal pay law guaranteed equal

pay for "equal" rather than "comparable" work; it excluded employees not covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act; it contained no provision for administrative enforcement. Yet future amendments to the Fair Labor Standards Act extended coverage, and the procedures established by the Wage and Hour Division of the Department of Labor ultimately offered good results. Court decisions construed the meaning of "equal work" liberally, declining to apply the law solely to identical jobs: in the first ten years of its enforcement, 171,000 employees had been awarded $84 million in back pay alone under the provisions of the law.^[51]

The Women's Bureau coalition had succeeded in enacting its chief legislative objective through the advantages of a sympathetic social setting, an administration tied to its labor constituency, and effective leadership in Peterson and Goldberg. This particular combination of circumstances permitted the Women's Bureau coalition to achieve yet another of its goals: a commission on the status of women that had the power to reach beyond the narrow limits of an equal pay law and examine the whole question of women's status, even while draining away the minimal energy still fueling the Equal Rights Amendment.