ACKNOWLEDGMENTS IX
INTRODUCTION 1
PART I FIRST BURST OF PROGRESSIVE REFORM: ROCHE'S APPRENTICESHIP, 1886-1918
1 Childhood in the West, Education in the East, 1886-1908 13
2 Aspiring Feminist and Social Science Progressive, 1908-1912 26
3 Emergence as a Public Leader, 1912-1913 42
4 Seeking Fundamentals: The Colorado Coal Strike, 1913-1914 64
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 97
7 Migrating to a "Totally New Planet": Roche Takes Over Rocky Mountain Fuel, 1927-1928 110
8 "Prophet of a New and Wiser Social Order," 1929-1932 126
PART III SECOND BURST OF PROGRESSIVE REFORM: HEIGHT OF ROCHE'S RENOWN, 1933-1948
9 Working with the New Deal from Colorado, 1933-1934 143
10 At the Center of Power: Roche in the New Deal Government, 1934-1939 162
11 Generating a National Debate about Federal Health Policy, 1935-1939 177
12 Unmoored during Wartime, 1939-1945 193
13 Becoming a Cold War Liberal, 1945-1948 211
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 227
15 Democratic Denials and Dissent at the Miners' Welfare Fund, 1957-1963 247
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 265
17 Only Ten Minutes Left? Epilogue and Assessment 289
ABBREVIATIONS 297
NOTES 299
SELECT PRIMARY SOURCES 375
INDEX 379

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.

Robyn Muncy is associate professor of history at the University of Maryland. She is the author of Creating a Female Dominion in American Reform, 1890-1935 and the coauthor of Engendering America: A Documentary History, 1865 to the Present.