Women and Progressives

Chapter 21, Section 2

pg. 615

Roles of Women

• The roles of middle-class women changed during the late 1800’s.

• Why? - families became smaller. - children began spending the day at school. - men worked away from home. - technology made housework easier.

The “new woman”

• “New Woman” – a popular term used to describe educated, up-to-date women who pursued interests outside their homes.

• The “New Woman” would choose to go to college (made up 40% of college students).

• The “New Woman” would have a career in..

- teaching

- nursing

- medicine

Examples of “New Women”

Jane Addams Mother Cabrini

Women’s Clubs

• Purpose: classes, recreation, and social services.

• At first, did NOT allow African-American women.

• Mary Church Terrell formed her own club.

• National Association for Colored Women

• Famous quote: “Lifting as we climb”

Mary Church Terrell web.ics.purdue.edu/~wov/pioneers.htm

Suffragists

• Suffragists – women and men that fought for the women’s right to vote.

Suffragist Rally

Famous Suffragist Organizations

• National Woman Suffrage Association.

• Founded by:

- Elizabeth Cady

Stanton

- Susan B. AnthonyElizabeth Cady – left

Susan B. Anthony – right

Famous Suffragist Organizations

• National American Woman Suffrage Association

• Founded by:

- Anna Howard Shaw

- Carrie Chapman

Catt

NAWSA Officers at the White House

Going against Suffrage

• Some men AND women were against the idea of equal suffrage.

• Why?

- They believed that suffrage would disrupt the “natural” balance of the family and would lead to divorce and neglected children.

Alice Paul meets with President Woodrow Wilson

• Alice Paul – Quaker that founded the National Women’s Party in 1916.

• She met with President Woodrow Wilson in 1917 to persuade him to support women’s suffrage.

• He refused, so she led a “hunger-strike” protest in front of the White House.

Their wishes come true!

• Wyoming was the first state to grant women suffrage.

• By 1919, women could vote in at least some of the states’ elections in most of the 48 states.

• NINETEENTH AMENDMENT – voted by Congress in 1919, and ratified in 1920.

(officially granted women the right to vote)

Women working as Progressives

• Women did not just focus on fighting for suffrage. • Examples: - they worked in settlement houses - sponsored labor laws protecting women and children on the job. - formed women’s trade unions for working- class women (Women’s Trade Union League – WTUL) - sponsored food and drug laws (like the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meatpacking Laws)

Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle”

• Women would have supported the muckraker, Upton Sinclair.

• He was an author who wrote about the horrors of a meatpacking industry in Chicago.

• The book includes instances of bosses bribing the workers.

• The book also includes how rats were cooked with meat to make sausage.

• The book led to the passage of the Meat Inspection Act of 1906 and the Pure Food and Drug Act.

Book Cover of Sinclair’s “The Jungle”

More on “The Jungle”• An instant best-seller, Sinclair's book reeked with the stink of the

Chicago stockyards. He told how dead rats were shoveled into sausage-grinding machines; how bribed inspectors looked the other way when diseased cows were slaughtered for beef, and how filth and guts were swept off the floor and packaged as "potted ham."

In short, "The Jungle" did as much as any animal-rights activist of today to turn Americans into vegetarians.

But it did more than that. Within months, the aroused -- and gagging -- public demanded sweeping reforms in the meat industry.

President Theodore Roosevelt was sickened after reading an advance copy. He called upon Congress to pass a law establishing the Food and Drug Administration and, for the first time, setting up federal inspection standards for meat.

Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU)

• Later became known as the Anti-Saloon League.• These women were against the sale of alcohol and

encouraged prohibition. (the passage of laws to stop the making or selling of

alcohol) • Their crusades became known as the temperance

crusades.• EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT- voted on by Congress in

1917, ratified in 1919. (PROHIBITION LAW – made it illegal to make, transport,

or sell alcohol anywhere in the United States)

Carry Nation

• One of the most famous temperance crusaders.

• She used to protest the sale of alcohol by pushing her way into saloons, or bars, and break bottles and kegs with her ax.

Carry Nation http://www.kshs.org/cool2/hammer.htm