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]