Date: Sat, 4 Mar 1995 16:57:51 -0800 From: Tom Condit <tomcondit-AT-igc.apc.org> Subject: BLS and Florence Kelley Re Doug Henwood's remarks in defense of the Bureau of Labor Statistics: Far be it from me to denigrate the BLS. Sometimes flawed, sometimes messed with from above, their figures on labor and the work force are one of the few handles we have in understanding what's happening to us. In fact, the very existence of the BLS is a curious historical footnote about one of the tiny victories of the socialist movement in the U.S. Florence Kelley was the daughter of a former Jacksonian Democrat turned Republican congressman from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who was called "Pig Iron" Kelley for his devotion to the tariff needs of the iron and steel industry. Florence K. went to Switzerland to study at the University of Zurich, which at the time (the early 1880s) was the only university in Europe which accepted women students. (That's why all those Russian revolutionaries went there, too.) In Zurich, which was a hotbed of radical politics, she married an exiled Polish revolutionary and was converted to Marxism. Kelley did the first English translation (after four decades!) of Friedrich Engels' _The Condition of the Working Class in England in 18(42?--don't have it in front of me)_. That task done, she thought it would be nice to do a work on "The Condition of the Working Class in the United States in 1884". When she returned to this country, however, she found that she couldn't write her planned book because no statistical information existed. She spent several decades lobbying state by state, mobilizing labor unions, etc., to create bureaus of labor statistics, beginning with one in Massachusetts and culminating with the national one. Because of her work, we have the ability to track "The Condition of the Working Class in the United States in ....", but she never did get her own book written. Kelley was also a pioneer "social worker" and an early consumer advocate, and it's in those two roles that she gets her tiny mention in the history books, but the creation of the BLS was far more important. Tom Condit --- from list marxism-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu --- ------------------
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