Relentless Reformer : : Josephine Roche and Progressivism in Twentieth-Century America / / Robyn Muncy.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Princeton University Press Complete eBook-Package 2014-2015
• VerfasserIn: Muncy, Robyn,
• Place / Publishing House: Princeton, NJ : : Princeton University Press, , [2014]; ©2014
• Year of Publication: 2014
• Edition: Pilot project. eBook available to selected US libraries only
• Language: English
• Series: Politics and Society in Modern America ; 108
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (440 p.)

Josephine Roche (1886-1976) was a progressive activist, New Deal policymaker, and businesswoman. As a pro-labor and feminist member of Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration, she shaped the founding legislation of the U.S. welfare state and generated the national conversation about health-care policy that Americans are still having today. In this gripping biography, Robyn Muncy offers Roche's persistent progressivism as evidence for surprising continuities among the Progressive Era, the New Deal, and the Great Society.Muncy explains that Roche became the second-highest-ranking woman in the New Deal government after running a Colorado coal company in partnership with coal miners themselves. Once in office, Roche developed a national health plan that was stymied by World War II but enacted piecemeal during the postwar period, culminating in Medicare and Medicaid in the 1960s. By then, Roche directed the United Mine Workers of America Welfare and Retirement Fund, an initiative aimed at bolstering the labor movement, advancing managed health care, and reorganizing medicine to facilitate national health insurance, one of Roche's unrealized dreams.In Relentless Reformer, Muncy uses Roche's dramatic life story-from her stint as Denver's first policewoman in 1912 to her fight against a murderous labor union official in 1972-as a unique vantage point from which to examine the challenges that women have faced in public life and to reassess the meaning and trajectory of progressive reform.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Part I. First Burst of Progressive Reform: Roche'S Apprenticeship, 1886-1918 -- 1. Childhood in the West, Education in the East, 1886-1908 -- 2. Aspiring Feminist and Social Science Progressive, 1908-1912 -- 3. Emergence as a Public Leader, 1912-1913 -- 4. Seeking Fundamentals: The Colorado Coal Strike, 1913-1914 -- 5. "Part of It All One Must Become": Progressive in Wartime, 1915-1918 79 -- Part II. First Temporary Reversal of Progressive Reform: Roche'S New Departures, 1919-1932 -- 6. Work and Love in a Progressive Ebb Tide, 1919-1927 -- 7. Migrating to a "Totally New Planet": Roche Takes Over Rocky Mountain Fuel, 1927-1928 -- 8. "Prophet of a New and Wiser Social Order," 1929-1932 -- Part III. Second Burst of Progressive Reform: Height of Roche'S Renown, 1933-1948 -- 9. Working with the New Deal From Colorado, 1933-1934 -- 10. At the Center of Power: Roche in the New Deal Government, 1934-1939 -- 11. Generating a National Debate about Federal Health Policy, 1935-1939 -- 12. Unmoored during Wartime, 1939-1945 -- 13. Becoming a Cold War Liberal, 1945-1948 -- Part IV. Second Temporary Reversal of Progressive Reform: Roche Builds a Private Welfare System in the Coalfields, 1948-1963 -- 14. Creating "New Values, New Realities" in the Coalfields, 1948-1956 -- 15. Democratic Denials and Dissent at the Miners' Welfare Fund, 1957-1963 -- Part V. Third Burst of Progressive Reform: Roche Reclaims the Full Progressive Agenda, 1960-1976 -- 16. Challenged and Redeemed by the New Progressivism, 1960-1972 -- 17. Only Ten Minutes Left? Epilogue and Assessment -- Abbreviations -- Notes -- Select Primary Sources -- Index