Daughters of the Declaration: How Women Social Entrepreneurs Built the American Dream

Arguing that individual citizens’ initiatives in the voluntary not-for-profit sector have contributed as much as business entrepreneurs to America’s greatness, the authors trace the work of female civic leaders, or “social entrepreneurs,” from the Revolutionary War through the 1938 passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act. American philanthropy expert Gaudiani (Generosity Unbound) and husband Burnett, a retired academic and business administrator, begin with the story of Esther Reed, the wife of a Pennsylvania governor, who published a 1778 broadsheet setting out a bold plan for national women’s fund-raising organizations that raised tens of millions in today’s dollars for the Revolutionary War effort. In 1793, a freed slave and foster mother to 48 black and white children, Catherine Ferguson used the income from baking wedding cakes to fund the nation’s first “Sabbath school,” a secular school on Sundays for child laborers that was replicated across New York City. More widely known is the case of Frances Willard, national president of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, who fought a battle that changed public attitudes on alcohol abuse and its social consequences. Although the examples of strong women who were agents of change for their fellow citizens are edifying and inspirational, this social history is geared toward specialists in public policy, philanthropy, and women’s studies and will have limited appeal to lay readers. (Nov.)