Belle Moskowitz

Belle Moskowitz was Alfred E. Smith's closest political adviser during his four-year term as Governor of New York and as a result, the most powerful woman in American political life during the fifteen years starting in 1918. She served as Smith's political strategist and campaign manager and was a major force in developing the social welfare programmes for which his administration is best known today; many of these programmes were precursors of programmes later developed on the national level by Franklin D. Roosevelt under the New Deal. Moskowitz had also been active in the social settlement in the Progressive Era before World War I, and was a union negotiator and arbitrator for the garment industry and the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union. This book shows the pressures on women acting in the public sphere in this period. Students of American political history.