Episode 44 - Holiday Episode: Ethical Past, Present, and Future

Nothing about the holidays will be normal this year, but we still wanted to do a holiday episode. So, this year we’re riffing off of A Christmas Carol. Joined by past guest Robert Miller, we’re going to bring you stories of ethical consumption past, present, and future.

Ethical Consumption Past: The National Consumers’ League’s White Label Campaign

Kristen’s story of ethical consumption past is about the White Label, which is an ethical label created in the 1890s by the National Consumers’ League under the leadership of a badass named Florence Kelley.

The White Label campaign is a good example of how consumer power can be partnered with labour activism and lobbying to secure genuine change. It also offers a road map for change now that there has been a return to sweat shop conditions under globalization.

Florence Kelley

Florence Kelley (1859-1932) was a feminist, a social democrat, and an all-around bad ass. She was one of the leading figures in America’s Progressive Era (1890-1920), which saw the expansion of state authority in the workplace.[1]

Florence Kelley was the daughter of a pro-labor Republican congressman. Her parents were both abolitionists and supported Kelley’s interest in education and women’s rights. So, Kelley was immersed in social activism from a young age.[2]

Kelley grew up in Philadelphia and graduated from Sage College at Cornell in 1882.[3] (It was rare for women to go to university at the time). She was denied admission to graduate study at the University of Pennsylvania, so she studied law and government at the University of Zurich, one of few European universities that admitted women.[4] She became frustrated by barriers to women’s participation in public life, which prompted her to join the Social Democratic Party.[5] She became increasingly critical of her father’s political compromises, and cut off contact with her family in Philadelphia.[6]

Kelley married a socialist medical student from Russia, had three children, and her family moved to New York. She eventually re-established contact with her family just before her father’s death in 1890, and in his pro-labor tradition she became an expert on child labor.[7]

When her husband became abusive, she and her children escaped to Chicago, where she joined a community of women reformers at a place called Hull House.[8] Kelley quickly became a leader in Chicago’s anti-sweatshop movement. One of her first contributions was a report called ‘The Sweating System of Chicago’, written for the Illinois Bureau of Statistics of Labor, which established the need for government intervention to stop labor abuse in sweatshops.[9]

Kelley was once described as “the toughest customer in the reform riot, the finest rough-and-tumble fighter for the good life for others, that Hull House ever knew. Any weapon was a good weapon in her hand – evidence, argument, irony or invective.”[10]

That report was one of several pressures that led to an inquiry into sweatshops and tenement-house labor.[11] The committee recommended anti-sweatshop legislation that closely resembled draft legislation submitted by Kelley, which was passed as the Factory and Workshop Bill of 1893 in Illinois.[12]

“It established eight hours as the legal limit of the working day for women, restricted child labor, and created a factory inspection office to which Kelley was appointed in 1893. Although federal workers had benefited from eight-hour legislation since the 1860s, and although skilled workers (in the building trades for example) obtained an 8-hour day through the power of unions and the threat to strike, unskilled workers, especially women, customarily labored between ten and fourteen hours a day. Because child and women workers were crowded into a few occupations and were therefore easily replaced, it was difficult for them to form unions or to negotiate with employers by threatening to strike. Illinois legislators tried to bring the benefits of shorter hours to women and children who were unable to achieve those benefits through unions or strikes.”[13]

The most controversial element of the law was an eight-hour workday for women.[14]

Kelley was selected to be the Chief Factory Inspector for the state of Illinois. She was the first woman to hold this position. As Chief Factory Inspector, she unsuccessfully sued several businesses for failing to uphold the 8-hour workday. The Illinois Supreme Court found the hours law unconstitutional (because of a bullshit finding that it violated the fourteenth amendment – the equal protection clause).[15] Kelley’s frustration led her to become a lawyer. She graduated with a law degree from Northwestern University in 1895.

I read some testimony from Kelley’s factory inspections, and it was pretty gross and heartbreaking. There are stories of horribly disfigured young children, with no access to health or sanitation, working in candy, garment, and button factories.

Kelley’s investigations also made her aware of how racism affected working conditions, and she worked to combat racism as well.

Kelley moved to New York in 1899 to head the newly founded National Consumers League, which became the leading advocacy organization for protective labor legislation.[16] She remained in that role until she died in 1932.

Kelley was instrumental in establishing a national minimum wage, legislating maximum working hours, and creating the US Children’s Bureau.

She was one of the founding members of the NAACP and the Women’s International League of Peace, founded the National Labor Committee, and served as vice present of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. 

‘The Sweating System’

In part one of our fast fashion series, we talked about sweatshops and their transformation from the Industrial Revolution to today. As a refresher, though, the invention of the lockstitch sewing machine in the 1830s led to the mechanization of clothes-making. By the end of the 1800s, many people worked in unsafe and exploitative conditions at garment factories around the western world.

Florence Kelley called this the ‘sweating system’. I’m going to quote from her description of this system and its causes:

“The ‘sweating system’ is one of respectable antiquity and is a surviving remnant of the industrial system which preceded the factory system, when industry was chiefly conducted on the piece price plan in small shops or the homes of the workers. Machinery developed the modern factory and concentrated labor, but in the tailoring trades, the practice of sending out garments, ready-cut, to be made by journeymen at their homes and at a price per garment, has survived and is still maintained in custom work, in which the journeyman is still a skilled tailor who makes the whole garment. The modern demand for ready-made clothing in great quantities and of the cheaper grades has, however, led to much subdivision of the labor on garments, and with it to the substitution of the contractor or sweater, with groups of employés in separate processes, for the individual tailor, skilled in all of them.”[17]

The National Consumers’ League

The consumers’ league movement started in New York in 1896. It began with a small group of women, headed by Josephine Shaw Lowell, who campaigned to set a fair wage for sales girls and cashiers at department stores.[18]

But by the end of the century, consumers’ leagues became a powerful force in American politics. Consumers’ leagues were organizations that fought for the welfare of consumers and workers who had little voice or power in the marketplace and workplace. They especially fought for women and children, who were less able to unionize and so to achieve gains through collective action.

As activist Josephine Goldmark described it, the rise of consumers’ leagues “marked […] the beginning of a new era; the appearance, for the first time, of the consumer, as such, on the national scene; for the first time articulate. By persuasion, by presenting the facts and then by supporting legislation – for they were not too naïve – the consumers’ leagues sought to relieve the consciences of those who did not want to buy the products of sweatshop and child labor.” [19]

The consumers’ league movement started in New York, but it soon spread to Massachusetts, Illinois, and Pennsylvania. The National Consumers’ League was founded in 1898. Florence Kelley was appointed the first secretary of the NCL in 1899.

Under Kelley’s tenure, the NCL established 64 consumer leagues across America.[20] In the organization’s first five years, Kelley focused on building a grassroots movement.  By 1906 there were 63 locals in 20 states with 7,000 members.[21]

The NCL’s early work concentrated on influencing consumer behaviour, but the organization expanded its work to focus on legal reform, lobbying, and defending protective legislation for workers against constitutional challenges.[22]

The NCL continued throughout the twentieth century as a broad-based consumer protection organization. It has advocated successfully for federal meat-inspection laws, workplace safety standards, unemployment compensation, and fraud protection.

The White Label Campaign 

“To live means to buy, to buy means to have power, to have power means to have responsibility.” – Florence Kelley

During the National Consumers’ League’s early years, one of its primary tools was the white label.

The white label was essentially a voluntary ethical standard. Employers whose labor practices met the NCL’s standards for fairness and safety were granted a white label. And the NCL urged consumers to support companies with white labels, while boycotting those that failed to earn the white label.

The white label was based on a “white list” established by the New York City Consumers’ League for department stores, which itself was modelled on a list published by British trade unions.[23] The white list had the advantage of avoiding legal challenges that would have accompanied a blacklist of firms to boycott.[24]

To qualify for a White Label, manufacturers had to submit to an inspection and meet these minimum conditions:

• The State factory law is obeyed,

• All the goods are made on the premises,

• Overtime is not worked, and

• Children under sixteen years of age are not employed.[25]

The white label campaign appealed to middle-class consumers through emphasis on the public health threat posed by using products made in disease-ridden tenements.[26] “The new germ theory of disease transmission lent credence to this view”, as did worker advocacy – tuberculosis was rampant in sweatshops.[27]

Although the health argument was important for winning over middle-class consumers, the white label reached beyond this to address goals that were important for workers – enforcing state factory laws, preventing subcontracting, prohibiting overtime, and ending child labour.[28]

Somewhat problematically, the white label drew on the example of a union label which was used in the late 1800s in San Francisco to discourage the purchase of cigars made by Chinese immigrants.[29] So, while the white label was primarily speaking to the middle class, it also “evoked the symbolism of white trade unions and their efforts to discourage the patronage of nonunion shops.”[30] Kelley and the NCL were trying to help sweatshop workers, most of whom were immigrants, so I think this is more incidental than a reflection on the goals of the NCL, but it does highlight the problems with racism in Progressive Era labour movements.

Because the NCL had limited capacity, the white label was applied to garments that middle-class women purchased frequently – corsets and corset substitutes, skirt and stocking supporters, wrappers, petticoats, and flannelette garments (essentially underwear).[31]

The height of the white label’s success was 1904, when the NCL had licensed 60 factories.[32] The white label’s success stemmed from three related developments:

1. A new understanding of the consumer’s economic centrality,

2. The new knowledge it generated about specific working conditions within members’ communities, and

3. Members’ ability to put their new knowledge to political use and implement legislation designed to improve working conditions in their city and state.[33]

“Undergirded by new understanding of their own economic position, by new knowledge about their communities, and by new capacity for political action, consumers supporting the White Label campaign became the vehicle whereby the National Consumers’ League emerged as the single most politically effective organization of middle-class women in the decades before World War I.”[34]

The White Label campaign improved upon previous anti-sweatshop campaigns, which were based on pity and fear. Instead, the NCL emphasized informed morality. New consumer choices, they argued, entailed a responsibility. Quote from Kelley in 1901:

“We can have cheap underwear righteously made and clean; or we can have cheap underwear degradingly made and unclean. Henceforth, we are responsible for our choice.”[35]

The consumer had a duty to recognize her direct relationship with the producer, to learn about the producer’s working conditions, and to limit her purchases to goods made under moral conditions.[36] Purchasing became a moral act.[37]

The White Label facilitated consumers in their duty by providing trustworthy knowledge obtained through its factory inspections and other investigatory techniques.

Promoting the White Label was typically the first project for new consumers’ locals. They served to create new civic spaces where women worked to expand state responsibility. Leagues forged close relationships with state factory inspectors, advanced public awareness through women’s civic groups, and lobbied for protective legislation.

Legacy of the White Label Campaign

The White Label campaign ended in 1918 in order to provide space for a union label in garment production.[38] But the NCL had already shifted focus by 1907.[39] Having garnered public power through the White Label campaign, the NCL turned to fighting for consumer and worker protection through the courts and legislatures.[40] In this sense, we can think about the White Label campaign as an “opening wedge for more general protections for American wage earners”.[41]

However, the NCL revived the White Label in the mid-1920s, when the political climate grew hostile to the prospect of labour legislation. This time, the White Label was applied to the candy industry.[42]

For the NCL, the White Label campaigns were fundamentally about publicizing the cause: the label spread messages about working conditions to a wide, middle-class audience.[43]

The NCL continues to work for the goal of promoting a fair marketplace for workers and consumers. The NCL’s current focus areas are fraud, child labor, LifeSmarts (a consumer literacy competition), and health care reform. They still do a lot of good work, but I think Florence Kelley would want the organization to be a bit more radical than they are now.

Ethical Present

Kyla decided to focus her research on how climate action has improved this year, and had trouble finding a lot of really positive stories. Below is what she talked about in the episode, but hit us up on Twitter if you have more!

She started by discussing articles from Doctors and Architects calling for action on climate change. In 2018 296k people died from heatwaves.

Jacinda Ardern and New Zealand declared a climate emergency, and committed to a carbon-neutral government by 2025.

“Ardern said the government sector will be required to buy only electric or hybrid vehicles, the fleet will be reduced over time by 20% and all 200 coal-fired boilers used in the public service’s buildings will be phased out.”

They hadn’t done much to date on climate change, so they’ll need a lot more. Especially since the government sector isn’t responsible for most of their emissions. That would be road transport and agriculture.

The Guardian reported on weather presenters in Australia including climate change in their weather forecasts, which helps the public fill knowledge gaps and normalizes the discourse. This is important because Australia is an outlier on climate action.

“When it comes to who people trust on climate change… research has found that climate scientists are highest on the list, followed by farmers and firefighters. Fourth are weather presenters.”

Kyla quoted directly from this BBC article in the episode, which looks at stretch goals for warming by the end of the century:

A new analysis, seen by the BBC, suggests the goals of the UN Paris climate agreement are getting "within reach."
The Climate Action Tracker group looked at new climate promises from China and other nations, along with the carbon plans of US President-elect Joe Biden.
These commitments would mean the rise in world temperatures could be held to 2.1C by the end of this century.
Previous estimates indicated up to 3C of heating, with disastrous impacts.
…
In September, China's President Xi Jinping told the UN that his country will reach net zero emissions by 2060, and that its emissions will peak before 2030. According to the CAT researchers, this could reduce warming by 0.2 to 0.3C by the end of the century.
Japan and South Korea have both followed suit, pledging to reach net zero by 2050. South Africa and Canada have also announced their own net zero targets.
…
"We now have north of 50% of global emissions covered by big countries with a zero emissions by mid-century goal," said Bill Hare from Climate Analytics, who helped lead the Climate Action Tracker analysis.
"When you add all that up, along with what a whole bunch of other countries are doing, then you move the temperature dial from around 2.7C to really quite close to two degrees."
"It's still a fair way off from the Paris Agreement target, but it is a really major development,"
…
"There are countries that still remain bad actors, including Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Australia, Russia, and a few others,"

Shout-out to Morocco and The Gambia, the only two countries in 2019 with a plan to reduce C02 emissions to a level consistent with limiting warming to 1.5 degrees, according to this National Geographic report card.

And shout-out to India for investing more in renewable energy than it is in fossil fuels. They have a goal to generate 40% of their power from renewables by 2030. It’s progress is so rapid they’re on track to smash that target. Their plan is compatible with a 2 degree warming scenario, and could be compatible with a 1.5 degree goal if they stopped building new coal-fired power plants.

WSJ estimated business travel will reduce by between 19%-36%. This would affect the airline industry big time because “Bank of America estimates business trips contributed $334 billion to the entire travel industry’s $1.1 trillion in revenue last year.” Some quick math – 30% reduction could cost the travel industry 10% of all revenue or 100 billion dollars.

Kyla mentioned Climate Change opinion by country, here is where she found that.

And here’s an article going into the details of how 2020 is one of the warmest years on record.

Ethical Future

We don’t make guests write notes ;)

Endnotes

[1] Westhoff, Laura. (1998). Florence Kelley’s Campaign Against Sweatshops in Chicago: Teaching Strategy. Binghamton, NY: State University of New York at Binghamton.

[2] Batlan, Felice. (2010). Florence Kelley and the Battle Against Laissez-Faire Constitutionalism. Available at: http://scholarship.kentlaw.iit.edu/fac_schol/69  

[3] Sklar, Kathryn Kish and Taylor, Jamie. (1998). How Did Florence Kelley’s Campaign against Sweatshops in Chicago in the 1890s Expand Government Responsibility for Industrial Working Conditions? Binghamton, NY: State University of New York at Binghamton.

[4] Woloch, Nancy. (2017). How Did Leaders of the National Consumers’ League and Their Lawyers Keep the Minimum Wage Alive from the Adkins Case to the Fair Labor Standards Act, 1923-1938? Alexandria, VA: Alexander Street.

[5] Sklar and Taylor, How Did Florence Kelley’s Campaign against Sweatshops in Chicago in the 1890s Expand Government Responsibility for Industrial Working Conditions?

[6] Sklar and Taylor, How Did Florence Kelley’s Campaign against Sweatshops in Chicago in the 1890s Expand Government Responsibility for Industrial Working Conditions?

[7] Sklar and Taylor, How Did Florence Kelley’s Campaign against Sweatshops in Chicago in the 1890s Expand Government Responsibility for Industrial Working Conditions?

[8] Sklar and Taylor, How Did Florence Kelley’s Campaign against Sweatshops in Chicago in the 1890s Expand Government Responsibility for Industrial Working Conditions?

[9] Sklar and Taylor, How Did Florence Kelley’s Campaign against Sweatshops in Chicago in the 1890s Expand Government Responsibility for Industrial Working Conditions?

[10] Sklar, Kathryn K. (1998). The Consumers’ White Label Campaign of the National Consumers’ League, 1898-1918. In Susan Strasser, Charles McGovern, and Matthias Judt (eds.) Getting and Spending: European and American Consumer Societies in the Twentieth Century. New York: Cambridge University Press, 17-35 at p.20.

[11] Sklar and Taylor, How Did Florence Kelley’s Campaign against Sweatshops in Chicago in the 1890s Expand Government Responsibility for Industrial Working Conditions?

[12] Sklar and Taylor, How Did Florence Kelley’s Campaign against Sweatshops in Chicago in the 1890s Expand Government Responsibility for Industrial Working Conditions?

[13] Sklar and Taylor, How Did Florence Kelley’s Campaign against Sweatshops in Chicago in the 1890s Expand Government Responsibility for Industrial Working Conditions?

[14] Sklar and Taylor, How Did Florence Kelley’s Campaign against Sweatshops in Chicago in the 1890s Expand Government Responsibility for Industrial Working Conditions?

[15] Sklar and Taylor, How Did Florence Kelley’s Campaign against Sweatshops in Chicago in the 1890s Expand Government Responsibility for Industrial Working Conditions?; Batlan, “Florence Kelley and the Battle Against Laissez-Faire Constitutionalism”. Comment that the ruling of bullshit is my own editorialization, although Batlan does call it “out of touch with reality” (2010: 7).

[16] Fee, Elizabeth and Brown, Theodore. (2005). Florence Kelley: A Factory Inspector Campaigns Against Sweatshop Labor. American Journal of Public Health 95(1): 50.

[17] Kelley, Florence. (1892). Document 1: Bureau of Statistics of Labor of Illinois [Florence Kelley], "The Sweating System of Chicago," part II in Seventh Biennial Report. Springfield, Ill.: H.K. Rokke, p. 357. Included in Kathryn Kish Sklar and Jamie Tyler. (1998). How Did Florence Kelley's Campaign against Sweatshops in Chicago in the 1890s Expand Government Responsibility for Industrial Working Conditions? Binghamton, NY: State University of New York at Binghamton.

[18] Goldmark, Josephine. (December 1949). Document 37: 50 Years--The National Consumers' League. Survey 85(12): 674-76. Included in Nancy Woloch. (2017). How Did Leaders of the National Consumers' League and Their Lawyers Keep the Minimum Wage Alive from the Adkins Case to the Fair Labor Standards Act, 1923-1938? (Alexandria, VA: Alexander Street, 2017).

[19] Goldmark, Josephine. (December 1949). Document 37: 50 Years--The National Consumers' League. Survey 85(12): 674-76. Included in Nancy Woloch. (2017). How Did Leaders of the National Consumers' League and Their Lawyers Keep the Minimum Wage Alive from the Adkins Case to the Fair Labor Standards Act, 1923-1938? (Alexandria, VA: Alexander Street, 2017).

[20] Fee and Brown, “Florence Kelley”.

[21] Sklar, “The Consumers’ White Label Campaign of the National Consumers’ League”.

[22] Batlan, “Florence Kelley and the Battle Against Laissez-Faire Constitutionalism”.

[23] Sklar, “The Consumers’ White Label Campaign of the National Consumers’ League”.

[24] Sklar, “The Consumers’ White Label Campaign of the National Consumers’ League”.

[25] Sklar, “The Consumers’ White Label Campaign of the National Consumers’ League”.

[26] Sklar, “The Consumers’ White Label Campaign of the National Consumers’ League”.

[27] Sklar, “The Consumers’ White Label Campaign of the National Consumers’ League” at p.19.

[28] Sklar, “The Consumers’ White Label Campaign of the National Consumers’ League”.

[29] Sklar, “The Consumers’ White Label Campaign of the National Consumers’ League”.

[30] Sklar, “The Consumers’ White Label Campaign of the National Consumers’ League” at p.23.

[31] Sklar, “The Consumers’ White Label Campaign of the National Consumers’ League”.

[32] Sklar, “The Consumers’ White Label Campaign of the National Consumers’ League” at p.19.

[33] Sklar, “The Consumers’ White Label Campaign of the National Consumers’ League”.

[34] Sklar, “The Consumers’ White Label Campaign of the National Consumers’ League” at p.25.

[35] Sklar, “The Consumers’ White Label Campaign of the National Consumers’ League” at p.27.

[36] Sklar, “The Consumers’ White Label Campaign of the National Consumers’ League” at p.28.

[37] Sklar, “The Consumers’ White Label Campaign of the National Consumers’ League” at p.27.

[38] Sklar, “The Consumers’ White Label Campaign of the National Consumers’ League”.

[39] Sklar, “The Consumers’ White Label Campaign of the National Consumers’ League”.

[40] Sklar, “The Consumers’ White Label Campaign of the National Consumers’ League”.

[41] Sklar, “The Consumers’ White Label Campaign of the National Consumers’ League” at p.32.

[42] Sklar, “The Consumers’ White Label Campaign of the National Consumers’ League”.

[43] Sklar, “The Consumers’ White Label Campaign of the National Consumers’ League”.