“A Conspiracy Against the Laity”

"ACONSPIRACY AGAINST THE LAITY" Curtis Cole Don S. Kirschner. The Paradox of Professionalism: Refomi and Public Service in UrbanAmerica, 1900-1940. Contributions in American History, No. 119. Westport: Greenwood Press,1986. xiii + 197pp. Nathan 0. Hatch, ed. The Professions in American History. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988. xiii + 220 pp. "All professions are conspiracies against the laity." George Bernard Shaw gave these words to the kindly old curmudgeon, Sir Patrick Cullen, in his 1906play The Doctor's Dilemma. 1 The observation is true today just as it was in 1906; but as Sir Patrick (and maybe even Shaw himself) would quickly point out, a conspiracy can be for evil or good purposes. Certainly the professions, and those occupations seeking such lofty status, act to conspire against the laity by maintaining the exclusive right to offer certain services. The question is, of course, whose interest does the limitation serve: the professionals', the public's, or both? This is, in my view, one of the most important issues to be grappled with in understanding the professions and professionalization, both in the historical and contemporary sense. Don Kirschner and the authors in Nathan Batch's collection deal with this issue, but they do not go far enough. Kirschner's study looks at three groups of urban reformers during the Progressive and New Deal eras: social workers, public health advocates and city planners. His book is about "howthese well-fixed social reformers ... perceived the urban milieu in the early decades of the twentieth century, what they proposed to do about it, and what that did to the way they thought about themselves." 2 Despite the fact that the book does not go far enough in analyzing the public/professional interest issue, it is well worth reading, primarily because it provides some insight into how and why these social reformers organized themselves to fight what they saw as the evils of the twentieth-century industrial threat to community. It is also valuable, however, because it provides a quick introduction to the historiography of professionalization during the early twentieth century. Kirschner's paradox (although one suspects that his title has as much to do with alliteration as analysis) relates to the professional reformers' 86 Curtis Cole methodology. He argues that their goals were essentially communityoriented , but their method was necessarily elitist. He describes the reformers as "a priesthood shepherding their flocks toward a higher truth and a greater common good. The trouble was that their professionalism kept getting between themselves and the sheep."3 In addition to methodology, however, Kirschner does deal with motivation. In this respect his analysis might be termed a post-revisionist interpretation. He identifies an early, sympathetic view among historians which focused on social reform, and a more recent, highly critical view which focuses on social control. He sees himself as belonging to neither school because he believes that the professionalizing reformers he studied were motivated by a complex and often ambiguous collection of ideas including both altruism and elitism. "These reformers were not saints, but they were not rascals either."4 In this context his argument is compelling. It is always refreshing to have someone tell us that things are more complicated than they appear to be. One aspect of this complexity was evident in the volatile ideological battles of the Progressive era. In a discussion of the Progressive era professionals' fight to reform American society, Kirschner describes how the reformers' efforts were hindered by entrenched values of individualism. He argues that their struggle was essentially one of collectivism vs. individualism. The opposition was not just entrenched individualism, but individualism enhanced to benefit capital greatly. In this context he uses the example of the much-expanded judicial definition of the Fourteenth Amendment prohibition against deprivation of "any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law," which the courts used to protect corporate property. The reformers won some battles; they won in 1910 in Illinois when the state supreme court upheld legislation which dictated a maximum ten,.....hourwork day for women; but they lost in 1911 when the New York State Supreme Court struck down a workmen's compensation scheme. In further support of his argument...