The Corporation as Family: The Gendering of Corporate Welfare, 1890-1930

The beginning of the twentieth century witnessed a remarkable growth of corporate welfare programs in American industry. By the mid-1920s, 80 percent of the nation’s largest companies — firms including DuPont, International Harvester, and Metropolitan Life Insurance — engaged in some form of welfare work. Programs were implemented to achieve goals that ranged from improving basic workplace conditions, to providing educational, recreational, and social opportunities for workers and their fam...