What was municipal housekeeping

Abstract Gains in 20th century real wages and reductions in the black-white wage gap have been linked to the midcentury ascent of school quality.

This Article doi: Human Resources Fall vol. Classifications Articles. Learn how your comment data is processed. You must be logged in to post a comment. Roots of Municipal Capacity-Building In the late 19th century, a movement for municipal reform gained prominence across the nation, led by the emergence of local good government bureaus and the launch of the National Municipal League. The Successes of Cleaning House Contemporary environmentalism, typically dated to Earth Day , often underappreciates its roots in the municipal housekeeping movement of nearly a century earlier Unger Nina Allender Brough, Aaron R.

Wilkie, Jingjing Ma, Mathew S. Isaac, and David Gal. Gugliotta, Angela. Gustafson, Melanie. Landy, Marc and Charles Rubin. Marshall Institute. Lewis, Tiffany. Logan, John R.

Berkeley: University of California Press. Mann, Susan A. Marvier, Michelle and Hazel Wong. DOI Rome, Adam. Skocpal, Theda. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Stivers, Camilla. Unger, Nancy C. New York: Oxford University Press. Wolotch, Nancy. Please be respectful. To comment, enter your name and text below you can also sign in to use your Scalar account.

Comments are moderated. Sign in or register for additional privileges. Emily Scarbrough , Author. Previous page on path Next page on path. Municipal Housekeeping. Historian Robyn Muncy proposes that the success of the bureau offered a conservative, political alternative to women. Comment on this page. Many tasks of housekeeping that were formerly performed by the individual householder are now performed by city officials.

So gradually has the city taken over tasks that were once performed by the individual householders, and so many other tasks have been put upon it as it has grown into the complex and intricate thing that it is, and living in it has become such a co-related and interdependent process, that it is now confronted in a very real sense by the same problem on a highly magnified scale that confronts the individual housekeeper in making the home a clean, healthy, comfortable and attractive place in which to live.

Under modern conditions the homemaker does right to buy the household necessities, the furniture, the food, the clothes from the factory because they are made more cheaply and better there than she can have them made at home. She would be a social and economic failure if she did not adjust herself to the new industrial order of the factory system. She has not less human kindness and sympathy because she allows her sick to be cared for in the hospital, nor has she less maternal love because she sends her children out of the home to be educated.

She merely recognizes that she is living in an age of specialization, and because she wants the best care and the best training for those she loves, she entrusts them to the care of specialists.