Education and Legislation: Affluent Women\u27s Political Engagement in the Consumers\u27 Leagues of the Progressive Era

This paper examines the extent to which the National Consumers’ League and similar localized leagues provided middle- and upper-class women with new opportunities for involvement in American politics during the early Progressive Era, or roughly the last decade of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth. These organizations undertook various efforts – including “list” and “label” campaigns – to educate the consuming public about the poor working conditions suffered by retail employees and especially factory workers in the garment industry, with a focus on employed women and child laborers. Later on, the leagues provided their female members with important opportunities for extensive political involvement as a more direct means of achieving their goals, including lobbying state legislators and preparing amicus curiae briefs for state courts and even the U.S. Supreme Court in the landmark case known as Muller v. Oregon (1908). Through these efforts, the leagues earned a significant amount of attention from other Progressive reform-minded organizations, including the Russell Sage Foundation

Table of Contents

The Richmond Journal of Law and the Public Interest is pleased to present our annual fall issue. This issue focuses on the widespread implications of criminal law and procedure and the way it is both affected by and affects our society and its mores. The issue is divided into two parts: three articles written by independent authors, and two comments by University of Richmond Students

Data Literacy for Librarians: A Free Online Professional Development Program from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

This lightning talk will provide a brief overview of the Data Literacy for Librarians badging and micro-credential program launched by the Research Division at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. The lightning talk will include basic aspects of the instructional design, metrics illustrating program success to date, and a quick glance at the seven badges comprising the micro-credential: Acting on Data, Identifying Data Sources and Frequencies, Saving Graphs and Organizing Data, Visualizing Data, Storytelling with Data, Understanding Data Types and Units, and Using Data Ethically. The seven individual badges comprising the micro-credential are aligned with specific dimensions of the Association of College and Research Libraries Information Literacy Framework. Instructions for how librarians can easily register for this free program will also be included at the end of the lightning talk

The Fear of Things to Come: Science Fiction Before and After World War II

A broad survey of science fiction before and after WWII. Examining changes in the fiction and how it is reflective of collective perception of technology

A “Self-Made Town”: Semi-Annual Furniture Expositions and the Development of Civic Identity in Grand Rapids, 1878–1965

In the later decades of the nineteenth century, prominent business figures in the city of Grand Rapids had reason to be both ambitious and optimistic. Striving to pull every last cent of profit out of available resources, they rationalized production workflows and integrated the latest technologies into their factories. They also perceptively discerned that a maturing railroad network connecting Grand Rapids to an emerging Victorian consumer economy would empower the city to achieve new levels of prosperity and fame through an industry on the verge of unprecedented growth: domestic furniture production. These entrepreneurs acted upon their hopes for the community’s future through the establishment of the semi-annual Grand Rapids Furniture Expositions, beginning in December 1878. At first glance, these expositions might seem to have been a mere manifestation of the community’s recognition as America’s “Furniture City.” However, they actually constituted a fundamental cause behind the construction of this civic identity by local citizens: business leaders and supportive community members who collaborated in making the Grand Rapids name synonymous with excellent household furniture on an international scale. These citizens also resolved to prevent similar efforts in rival cities—including the powerhouses of New York and especially Chicago—from eclipsing their own. The astonishing extent of their success provided the city with a greater profile in the national consciousness and transformed the physical and economic landscape of Grand Rapids itself. Given that Grand Rapids fits comfortably into Midwestern historian Timothy Mahoney’s description of small cities, this article also responds to his call for scholarly examinations of these urban spaces and their relationship to the broader regional and national economic forces that influence—and are influenced by—the fate of such cities. By arguing for the importance of the semi-annual furniture expositions to the development of Grand Rapids, this research sheds light on the place of a small Midwestern city in the growth of a national consumer culture during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

Protecting Neglect: The Constitutionality of Spiritual Healing Exemptions to Child Protection Statutes

This comment examines the historically uncertain balance between an individual\u27s right to freely exercise his religious beliefs and the state\u27s countervailing interest to protect the welfare of its youngest and most vulnerable citizens. By detailing the history of this fragile relationship through its statutory and judicial renderings, this comment will illustrate that spiritual exemptions to child protection statutes violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, as well as the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and conflict directly with multiple landmark Supreme Court decisions

Table of Contents

The Richmond Journal of Law and the Public Interest is pleased to present our annual fall issue. This issue focuses on the widespread implications of criminal law and procedure and the way it is both affected by and affects our society and its mores. The issue is divided into two parts: three articles written by independent authors, and two comments by University of Richmond Students

Protecting Neglect: The Constitutionality of Spiritual Healing Exemptions to Child Protection Statutes

This comment examines the historically uncertain balance between an individual\u27s right to freely exercise his religious beliefs and the state\u27s countervailing interest to protect the welfare of its youngest and most vulnerable citizens. By detailing the history of this fragile relationship through its statutory and judicial renderings, this comment will illustrate that spiritual exemptions to child protection statutes violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, as well as the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and conflict directly with multiple landmark Supreme Court decisions

Competing Visions: Political Constructions of Memory After World War I, 1919-1936

This paper argues that officials at the Paris Peace Conference, in the White House, and in the U.S. Congress strove for the realization of competing visions for the international order following World War I, and thus were required to construct their own interpretations of how the conflict should be remembered and what must be learned from it. A pervasive sense of victors’ justice dominated the proceedings in Paris, leading to the creation of a settlement which would find lasting support from neither European nor American decision makers. The dubious postwar arrangements made at Versailles would contribute to the resurgence of a conservative isolationism that dominated U.S. foreign policy throughout the 1920s and 1930s, promoted immediately after World War I by Senator Henry Cabot Lodge