Class and Gender Politics in Progressive-Era Seattle

“Putman skillfully chronicles how labor and women’s groups (representing both middle- and lower-income women) worked together to promote reform in Seattle before World War I. To my knowledge, there is no book set in the urban West that examines the political relationships between these groups and certainly none that does with the analytical prowess of Putman’s.”<br> --Eugene P. Moehring, author of Urbanism and Empire in the Far West, 1840-1890<br> <br> “What this book has to offer, in contrast to the existent literature, is a study of Seattle, an important urban center where major labor conflicts of the early twentieth century occurred in a state that granted women suffrage early and in which women’s organizations had important influence and power. John Putman places this study in the context of the expanding field of western history and connects his work to it by emphasizing ‘the New West’ as a focus for both historical development and scholarly attention. His analysis of a wide range of middle- and working-class organizations that were involved in the tumultuous politics of the age adds to the book’s significance.”<br> --Elizabeth V. Faue, author of Community of Suffering and Struggle: Women, Men, and the Labor Movement in Minneapolis, 1915-1945<br> <br>