Post Civil war developments
Industrialization and emergence of big business
After post Civil War the United
States of America showed wonderful industrial expansion and became industrial monster.
The previous industries extended and many latest ones by Industrialization
process, with petroleum refining, steel development, and electrical power was
come out. Railroads expanded mainly, bringing even remote parts of the country
into a national market economy.
American society changed by industrial growth.
It produced a new class of wealthy industrialists and a successful middle
class. It also produced a greatly expanded blue collar working class. The labor
force that made industrialization possible was made up of millions of newly
arrived immigrants and even larger numbers of migrants from rural areas.
American society became more varied than ever before.
Not everyone joint in the economic
prosperity of this period. Many workers were normally unemployed at least part
of the year, when they did work their earnings were relatively small. This condition
led many workers to support and join labor unions. For the flash, farmers also
faced hard times as equipment and increasing production led to more competition
and falling prices for farm products. Hard times on farms led many young people
to move to the city in explore of better job opportunities.
Americans who were born in the 1840s
and 1850s would experience huge changes in their lifetimes. Some of these
changes resulted from a comprehensive technological revolution. Their major
source of light, for example, would change from candles, to kerosene lamps, and
then to electric light bulbs. They would see their transportation evolve from
walking and horse power to steam-powered locomotives, to electric trolley cars,
to gasoline-powered automobiles. Born into a society in which the vast majority
of people were involved in agriculture, they experienced an industrial
revolution that totally changed the ways millions of people worked and where
they lived. They would experience the migration of millions of people from
rural America to the nation's fast growing cities.
Key Economic Developments: The rapid industrialization of the United
States after the Civil War brought with it spectacular changes to the
nation. The growth of industry, spread
of railroads, rise of big business, and emergence of labor unions in the
decades after the Civil War created the modern industrial economy. American workers and farmers faced new
problems in adapting to these changes.
Social Issues of the Gilded Age,
1877-1898
In the period that became known as the Gilded Age, the use of children
in factories and mines, the rapid growth of cities, the flood of immigrants,
and the continuing exploitation of minorities created pressing social problems.
KEY
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENTS
I. Communication devices
A.
telegraph—used for contact over long distances
using electric signals
B.
telephone-- repeat
II. . Bessemer process—
steel manufacture made more reasonable
III. Petroleum-based products—kerosene, used to heat and light homes
IV. Electricity—by
1900 powered rising number of machines, including electric streetcars and
subway trains
V. Internal combustion engine: petroleum-based
gasoline cars and airplanes, revolutionizing travel in America.
VI. Important
Inventions and Innovations
- Elias Howe: Invented sewing machine in
year 1846
- Elisha Otis:
passenger elevator in 1852
- Christopher Sholes:
typewriter in the year of 1867
- Alexander Graham Bell: Invention of telephone in 1876
- Thomas A. Edison:
electric light bulb in the year 1879
- Orville
and Wilbur Wright: Invention of airplane in 1903
VII. Impact of Technological Innovation
A. Standards
of Living raised : People became familiar
to new mass-produced precuts from clothing and household goods to kerosene
lamps and processed foods.
B. Transportation
and Communication: New forms of
transportation (steamships, railroads, automobiles) and new methods of contact
(telegraph and telephones) revolutionized the ways people traveled and
communicated.
C.
New engineering feats: suspension
bridges, skyscrapers of steel and concrete, massive public buildings enabled
urban centers to grow.
D. Work and Business: innovations transformed nature of work and
business. Through machines factories turned to faster and larger, so employees
lost all personal contact with their employers. The huge machine were became simple
parts for the workers.
THE
GROWTH OF RAILROAD
Railroad has played a vital role in the development of the United
States of America. The first
transcontinental railroad, linking the West and East Coasts, was completed in
1869. Other lines were laid out soon. Above
the next 25 years, railroad track amount was increased fivefold. Railroads affected just about every aspect of
American life. Throughout the nation they connected raw materials to factories
and factories to consumers.
I. Impact of Geography on American History
A.
Gold discovered: Sutter’s
Mill California 1848. West Coast
remained difficult to reach. All
realized need for transcontinental railroad, but were divided on route.
B. Civil
War results: North won the war, so northern route was secure from the enemies. Completion of the transcontinental railroad
made it possible to cross the continent in a matter of days, instead of months.
C.
Arrangement of the frontier: They opened the Great Plains to settlement.
Railroads linked ranches and farms on the Great Plains to town markets,
allowing farmers and ranchers to ship crops and livestock back east. Raw materials brought through railroad to
factories and finished goods to consumers. Railroads construction inspired the
iron, steel, and coal industries.
THE
RISE OF BIG BUSINESS
The development of ‘Big Business
‘already suggested it would become the universal and all-pervasive phenomenon
which exists today in the form of the ‘Global Economy’.
The rapid industrialization had one more factor that was the rise of “big
business after the civil war.” The era of
Big Business began when entrepreneurs in seek of profits consolidated their
businesses into massive corporations, which were so large that they could force
out competition and get control of a market Before
the war, mainly businesses were comparatively small in size. This changed with the arrival of modern
facilities capable of producing goods for a national market. Through economies
of scale, the huge size of these facilities allowed them to make vast saving,
by breaking up labor into separate steps, and through mechanization. This pattern was first introduced in the
manufacture of textiles, but gradually stretches to other industries.
I. Latest Forms of Business Organization: earlier to Civil War, most businesses were owned by individuals or
partnerships. Subsequent the war, business
of corporate form became more trendy.
A. Corporation: issues were shares to
investors by company. Each stockholder
is a partial owner of the corporation.
B.
Stockholder: share
in a corporation’s profits in the form of dividends. Became widespread because
of the large amounts of money they could increase.
II. Entrepreneurship:
Robber Barons:
Due
to the robber barons' unethical business
practices, such as the exploitation of labor, the general public typically
regards these aggressive capitalists with disdain. However, some historians
argue that the late-19th century entrepreneurs usually referred to as
"robber barons" cruel strategy. They used to keep down workers’ wages and
destroy competition.
But the efficiencies of large-scale
production meant prices lowered, making goods more affordable.
A.
Andrew Carnegie:
Andrew Carnegie was a Scottish-American
industrialist who led the enormous expansion of the American steel industry in
the late 19th century. Here, Workers put their 12 hour shifts at low wages.
They tried to crushed the organize.
B. John
D. Rockefeller (July 8, 1839 – May 23,
1937):
Rockefeller revolutionized the petroleum industryand defined the structure of modern philanthropy. In 1870, he founded the Standard Oil Company and aggressively ran it until he officially retired in 1897.
He took particularly, secret rates for
shipping his oil to the forced rail road companies .while they charged
competitors higher prices.
III. Impact of Geography on American History
Iron
and steel: Energy of American industry.
Used for locomotives, railroad tracks, and construction. By late 1850s rich coal in Western
Pennsylvania made possible construction for larger furnaces. Bessemer
process made-up: Bessemer revealed
that a blast of air at molten iron in a furnace would burn out dirt and turn iron
into steel .Carnegie built the first American plant to use process in
1870s. Abundant iron ore of
Michigan/Minnesota was shipped across Great lakes to Ohio and Western Pennsylvania,
where , In large steel mills it was polished and rolled. For nearly a century the region from Chicago
to Pittsburgh was America’s industrial heartland.
IV. Development of a National Market
National market emerged in later 19th
century: railroads, telegraphs, and
telephones are connecting with different parts of the country. National producers could make/ship goods more
reasonably than local producers. So it
was giving positive result for big business.
V. The guideline of Business: Smaller companies began driving
with big producers out of business; sometimes competitor companies reached
agreements to join together, often in trusts.
By authority, many producers do not wish to fight so they want to remove
competition.
A.
Trust: Legal agreement is combination of firms or corporation specially to cut
competition.
B.
Monopoly: complete control of
manufacture of a product. Prices are ready to display with the permission of
producers to consumers in monopoly power.
C. Laissez faire: government should not seize up in operation of free market. Laissez fair committed at first American
leaders, but abuses were so glaring that federal laws were needed to treat them. To regulate railroads and outlaw new laws
passed those monopolistic practices that quiet competition.
D.
Sherman Antitrust Act: Monopolistic
practices prohibited. P. 62 of glossary.
VI. The Impact of Big Business on America
Contributions Abuses
1. Lower cost declared by producers which make
them
more affordable. 1.small wages were
paying to them,exploited workers and circumstances were very
dangerous for the workers.
2. Standards of living were
raised 2. polluted theenvironment and
wasted
many natural resources
3. introduced
innovative practices which created 3. abused
free activity system
jobs and helped America prosper by reducing
competition
4. led
in the beginning of new inventions and 4. Used
to cutthroat competition to
Technologies
drive smaller businesses bankruptcy
Labour Movements
Prior to the Civil War, people worked in industry less
than a million; by the end of the century, that number had more than tripled. Conventionally,
skilled artisans were employed in small shops to make complete products while
setting their own hours, and more often than not, they worked alongside the
shop owner. As the factory system took hold and plants became larger, the scenery
of labor changed. The workers were accountable
for only a small part of the process that is called group production,
performing one specific task repeatedly in the creation of an item. Many tasks
could be done just as well by unskilled workers, and craftsmen found themselves
displaced by women, children, and recent immigrants, all of whom were willing
to work for a lower wage. The factory became an impersonal environment in which
workers never saw or even knew the owners, and where the rate of work was set
by the capabilities of the machines
The typical factory employee worked
ten hours a day the late nineteenth century, six days a week. The salary was between
$1.00 and $1.50 a day for the untrained workers; trained workers might make
twice as much, while women (who became a major percentage of the labor force
after the Civil War), children, and African-Americans were paid considerably
less. Accidents were frequent at workplace, and the idea of compensating
workers injured on the job was unheard of at the time. To help each other
through sickness, injury, and deaths, workers formed mutual benefit societies
(often organized along ethnic lines), but the assistance these groups provided
was least. Unemployment was major problems for the factory workers. It was
common for a worker, particularly an inexperienced one, to be out of a job at
least part of the year.
Early labor unions. Professional workers, such as cigar
makers, iron molders, and hat finishers. They formed the first labor unions before
the Civil War. Numerous of these craft unions (so named because they
organized workers within specific craft industries) joined together in 1866 to
form the National Labor Union (NLU) Although the organization advocated
an eight-hour workday, It did not support strikes to achieve the particular
goal. The NLU was also concerned with social reform, It provide a equivalent
rights for women, establishing worker cooperatives, and temperance. The union,
along with organized labor in general, declined sharply in the wake of the
depression of 1873 but not before influencing Congress to enact the eight-hour
day for federal employees (1868).
The Knights of Labor, organized in
1869, is considered to be the first industrial union, open to trained
and untrained workers, women, and African-Americans. This inclusive policy
contributed to its growth, and by the mid-1880s 700,000 members boasted by the
union . The plan of the Knights of Labor was a combination of reform ideas and particular
worker demands. Along with setting up cooperative workshops and calling for the
regulation of the railroads, The union given the instructions to the workers
that work must be done eight-hour per day, legislation caring the health and
giving protection to the workers, and to stop the child labor (for children
under the age of 14). To get these goals, political action and settlement
between employers and labor representatives were preferred over strikes. Knights
of labor declined after 1886 was due to several factors: several illegal
strikes were breakdown, the growing discontent of craftsmen who felt the union
favored the interests of untrained workers, and the public opinion in the wake
of the Haymarket Square Riot (1886) violence was major part of the
Knight.
Group meeting of workers was on May 4, 1886
called in Chicago's Haymarket Square to protest the death of a striker at the
McCormick Harvester plant. When the police attempt to disperse the crowd, a
bomb threw by someone that killed seven policemen and wounded several others.
The result of riot was many people were dead on both sides. Although it was one
of the three unions on strike at McCormick, the Knights of Labor had nothing to
do with the events in Haymarket Square. This fact did not prevent the union
from becoming a sufferer of the anti labor sentiment that swept the country.
Association declined speedily in next four years.
The American Federation of Labor. Samuel Gompers was the founder of
this in 8 December, 1886; it was first
federation of labor union in United States. This federation of Labor (AFL) was a federation of trained
workers in national craft unions that maintained their autonomy while working
together to encourage labor legislation and support strikes. In contrast to its
predecessors, the new union paying attention exclusively on basic labor issues
— the eight-hour workday, higher wages, better working conditions (particularly
plant safety), and the right of workers to organize. To Gompers, in the cigar
makers union he began his career, only craftsmen that could not be easily
replaced had the leverage essential to either negotiate effectively with
employers or go on strike. The AFL had little more than disdain for inexpert
workers or blacks, expert or not, and did not acutely try to organize women.
Although he was an immigrant himself, as were many local union men, Gompers
nevertheless powerfully supported restrictions on immigration to prevent new
arrivals from competing with American workers for jobs. Even though it excluded
most of the working class, the AFL became the major single labor association in
the country by 1900 with over one million members.
The Growth of Labor Unions
Rise of Labor Unions
For the growth of Labor Union the new
technologies and larger size of plants and factories made it possible for
producers to divide the tasks needed to manufacture many products. Instead of performing as expert craftsmen,
workers were reduced to executing monotonous, unskilled tasks. Workers could no longer manage their working
conditions and lacked any free bargaining power. Fast economic growth was frequently
accompanied by longer working hours and ruthless terms of employment. Conditions in factories, plants, and mines
often unsafe; safeguards around dangerous machinery inadequate. Workers need to work 6 day of 10-14 hours per
day. Jobs were basis on ‘take it or
leave it’. In tough economy, workers
have no choice if they do not work they can be dismissed so compel to agree with
harsh working conditions. Groups of
workers formed unions so they could act together.
Strikes were held, but were normally failed.
A. Knights of Labor: There was a plan to figure one large
national union joining all trained and untrained workers in 1869. Too loosely organized to be effective against
large companies. Lost a number of
important strikes and fell apart. [Haymarket Strike—p. 330 text]
B. American
Federation of Labor: was created by Samuel Gompers in 1881 hoped to create powerful national union by uniting workers
with related economic interests. A.F.L.
consisted of separate unions of trained workers joined together in a
federation. There were limited goals for Gompers to improving income and
working conditions for workers.
II. Public Attitudes toward Unions: mainly government leaders and
much of the community giving preference to business and opposed unions.
III .Reasons Why Government Favored Business
A.
Businesses had political authority:
Unions had less political power, while business leaders contributed
heavily to political campaigns.
B. Public
Opinion: favored laissez-faire policies, believing businesses should have right
to hire and fire as they get satisfied.
C. Shared interests: entrepreneurs and politicians commonly shared
the outlook that businessmen, not workers formed nation’s wealth.
D.
Unions tied to violence:
Haymarket Affair 1886 & Pullman Strike [p. 330 text]
Shift in Attitude: Began to vary in early 20th
century, the position of the government and public towards unions began to
change. In combustion at the Triangle
Shirtwaist Factory in New York 186 young women workers died in 1911 because
doors had been bolted shut from the outside.
Soon after, Congress passed legislation favorable to unions and formed
the Department of Labor to learn
labor problems and enforce labor laws.
FARM
ISSUES
From 1877 to 1898, still a mass of
Americans lived on farms. Railroad development
and removal of Native Americans to reservations enlarged available farmland.
I.
Impact of Geography on American
History:
A.
Great
Plains was unwelcoming physical atmosphere.
1. For houses few trees for lumber.
2. Essentiality of water .
3. Productive soil, but was covered by thick sod
created by thick roots of pampas grasses.
B.
To overcome these problems, farmers devised
new techniques.
1. Grass broke up by deep plows.
2. Bricks of sod were used to make
homes.
3. Barbed ware instead of wooden
fences.
4. Windmills pumped water from underground
wells.
II. Reasons for Farmer’s Economic Problems
A. Overproduction: The
opening of the West increased the quantity of farm land. Machinery raised productivity. Crops were
produce more by farmers, and law of deliver and demand caused food prices to
fall.
B. High expenses: Farmers had to ship their crops through
railroads. Railroads used lack of competition
on local routes but takes higher charges to the farmer for short distances.
C. farmers regularly in money owing since
they had to borrow to make improvements, get machinery, or obtain by during a
poor harvest.
II. The Grange Movement:
farmers planned in 1867. Most Grangers
blamed the gold standard and railroads for their economic difficulties. In numerous Midwestern states, Grangers selected
candidates to state legislatures, which passed laws regulating railroad and
grain storage rates. Congressed passed the Interstate
Commerce Act in 1887 [Interstate Commerce Commission p. 60 glossary] which banned
railroads from charging different rates to customers and other unfair
practices.
Chapter 10, 11 in text:
Mark Twin published
the novel The Gilded Age in 1873. p. 349 ‘Gilded Age’ since
then, the term “Gilded Age” has been applied to this era of American history
because of the lavish lifestyles and the corruption of new industrial rich.
CHILD LABOR
Prior to the Industrial Revolution, by helping their parents
children learned how to farm and execute other chores. After the
Industrial Revolution, children were trainee to factory owners. Since
children were little, they were talented to do some things with machinery that bigger
adults were not able to do. Often these tasks were very risky.
By 1900, one of five children under sixteen was working
outside the home. Their work was long, hard, unsafe, and underpaid.
However often families were surviving on their wages. It wasn’t until
1916 that President ‘Woodrow Wilson’ introduced a federal law prohibiting child
labor. The law was held illegal, but some states passed laws prohibition
child labor. P. 57 in glossary
THE FEMINIST MOVEMENT IN
THE UNITED STATES
At the time of the American revolt, American
women, just as their European sisters, were clearly an exploited group. They
were uneducated and no financial support of their personal. If they earned profits,
they infrequently had any control over it. Husbands dominate their wives and unfortunately,
women are totally dependent upon them. Middle- and upper-class women, of
course, enjoyed stuff comfort, but were confined and controlled at every turn
by firm social codes and the sexual double standard. Most important of all,
restrictions on women that they had no political rights, could not run for
office, and were not allowed to vote.
Without question many women admitted
their uneven status, but there were also others who took an active interest in
political life and who became increasingly sad with their continued exclusion.
The new "enlightened" ideas of liberty, justice, and equality that
were being discussed by men found a strong echo among clever women, and when
the American colonies ready for their secession from the English crown, female
hopes was high for sexual equality. So, one can presume that Abigail Adams
spoke not just for herself when, in the spring of 1776, she wrote to her
husband John (who later was to become the second president of the United
States): "I long to hear that you have declared an independency—and by the
way in the new Code of Laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to
make I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more kind and favorable
EARLY FEMINISTS
For equal rights women have long been under pressure, a target that stilt has
not been
reached today. Shown here are three famous early feminists.
|
(left) Abigail Adams (1744-1818) Wife of John Adams,Second President of the
U.S.
(right) Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) English feminist writer
|
|
ΓΌ
Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906) The American "Napoleon of the Women's
Movement". With her friend Elizabeth Cady Stanton a tireless fighter for women's
right to vote. To them than your relatives. Do not put such infinite power into
the hands of the Husbands. if they could all men would be tyrants. If particular
concern and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebellion,
and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which if we won’t any Representation."
However, John Adams rapidly rejected her plea in no doubtful terms: "As to
your amazing Code of Laws, I cannot but laugh. . . . Depend upon it, we know
better than to repeal our Masculine systems. Although they are in full Force,
you know they are little more than Theory, in Practice you know we are the
subjects. We have only the Name of Masters, and rather than give up this, which
would entirely subject Us to the Despotism of the Petticoat, I hope General
Washington, and all our brave Heroes would fight."
This answer, although based on firm
convictions, was, of course, insincere. Indeed, the argue that men were masters
in name only was a clear insult to Abigail's intelligence. Interestingly
enough, Adams revealed the real reason for his stance in a letter to a man,
James Sullivan, to whom he explained that the vote should be given only by the
property owners. Since few women owned property in those days, they were to be
excluded together with all other economically dependent persons. In short, as
John Adams well understood, but failed to discuss with his wife, the domination
of women was rooted in economic conditions.
At any rate, the United States of America were founded; women and slaves did
not get their political rights when adopting constitution. This was new country
for European women who admired and came to study on visits soon felt their keenness
dampened when they encountered the old sexual bias and the reality of slavery.
For example, the Scottish writer Frances Wright, who published her Views of
Society and Manners in America in 1820, and who eventually settled in the
United States, he fought against freedom of slaves, the emancipation of women,
and the rights of the urban poor. In the tradition of the illumination, she
also opposed the beginning religious revival in America as reactionary and
inimical to human progress. Her social experiments and her personal flamboyance
made her many enemies, but many of her criticisms were later vindicated. The
English writer Harriet Martineau in her Society in America (1837) offered a
perceptive description of life in the New World, but at times during her visit she
was fearful that time because she supported the abolition of slavery. Sexual
inequality and economic injustice were also attacked by the American writer
Margaret Fuller whose study Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845) was one of
the most admired books of the time.
In the 1820's and 30's different religious and moral reform movements had
attracted a growing number of American women. Education, peace, temperance
(i.e., the banning of alcohol), and abolition (i.e., the freeing of the slaves)
were the first social concerns to which female American Christians could
properly devote themselves. Over the following decades this general reform
movement flourished and eventually also came to include a new struggle for
women's suffrage. Temperance was, of course, of deep personal interest to
women, since entire family income totally get wasted on alcoholic husbands on
drinks, and their wives cannot do anything legal about it. Because of their
dependent status, they and their children were left isolated. The interest in
abolition, on the other hand, was entirely altruistic. There were a few great
black women in the abolitionist movement, such as Sojourner Truth and Harriet
Tubman, but its most prominent representatives belonged to the white middle
class.
Two of the best known abolitionists were the sisters Angelina and Sarah Grimke.
Born in South Carolina, they knew slavery firsthand and, their move to the
North after, they wrote and spoke widely against it. In 1838 Angelina Grimke
became the first woman to address an American legislative body when she gave an
abolitionist speech before the Massachusetts legislature and took the
opportunity to raise women's claim to full citizenship. Two other significant
abolitionists who turned to feminism were Lucretius Mott and Elizabeth Cady
Stanton. They were appalled by some episodes of sexual discrimination in 1848
within the abolitionist movement, therefore organized history's first
"Woman's Rights Convention" in Seneca Falls, N.Y... This convention passed
a Declaration of Sentiments which echoed the American Declaration of
Independence proclaiming: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that
all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator
with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness." The document then went on to quote the right to
change the form of government and stated: "The history of mankind is a
history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman,
having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over
her."
The Seneca Falls convention also adopted a set of resolutions, demanding legal
and educational reforms and the end of the sexual double standard. lastly, it
resolved "that it is the duty of the women of this country to secure to
themselves their sacred right to the elective franchise."
All over the country these demands were rapidly attacked and ridiculed by
clergymen and male journalists. There are few men had foresight enough to recognize the
importance of the women's cause and to support it, among them the great black
abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who applauded the feminists in his newspaper
and appeared as a guest speaker before subsequent women's rights conventions.
The women themselves were undaunted by the hostility they encountered and
battled on. Elizabeth Cady Stanton found a close friend and ally in Susan B,
Anthony, the "Napoleon of the women's movement", whose tireless work
and tactical talent won her national recognition and the respect of her
adversaries. The beliefs and experiences of these two courageous women were
recorded for posterity in the first three volumes of the massive History of
Woman Suffrage (1881-86) which they edited together.
The women's movement was temporary stopped
which brought by the American civil war (1861-1865), but when the
abolitionists' goal was finally achieved and the slaves were freed, women
seized the opportunity to raise their demands once more. Indeed, they had
reason to hope that, together with black men, they would now be granted the
vote. However, this hope was soon disappointed. Over and over again, women were
told to wait and not to jeopardize the granting of black voting rights by
pressing their own demands at the same time. This well-meaning, but
shortsighted argument succeeded in splitting the women's movement and reduced
its effectiveness for many years. Even poorer, women experienced the most
serious setback when, in the Fourteenth Amendment (1868), the Constitution for
the first time explicitly defined voters as men.
Nevertheless, in numerous other respects progress was being made. For female, higher
education became accessible. Women’s colleges had been founded in the 1830 and
beginning in 1860, there were coeducation in colleges and universities for
women. Thus, for example, Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman to earn a
medical degree in the United States. She and her sister Emily, who also became
a physician, wrote a book about Medicine as a Profession for Women (1860) and
inspired many girls to enter this and other formerly "male" fields of
study. Feminists also began to concern themselves with dress reform, the fight
against prostitution, better working conditions and higher salary, child labor,
unionization, and sexual liberty. Some of these issues proved even more
explosive than women's suffrage, and many women remained rather cautious and
conservative in discussing them. However, some "radical" feminists
were less inhibited. Thus, as early as 1871, Victoria Woodhull spoke of an "inalienable,
constitutional, and natural right" to "free love", emphatically
rejecting the still prevailing double standard. Emma Goldman, and after her
Margaret Sanger, campaigned for birth control. Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote a
penetrating analysis of female domination in her Women and Economics (1898).
This broadly read book demanded economic equality for women as the key to
political freedom and criticized the existing family structure.
It was obvious to everyone: In the course of the century the United States had undergone
a profound transformation. From an agrarian nation of independent settlers it
had changed into a largely urban and industrial society with millions of new
poor immigrants and vast social problems. The subjection and disenfranchisement
of women only added to these problems, because it made their solution more
difficult. Other nations which experienced similar pressures finally took
corrective action. In 1893 New Zealand decided that women can vote, Finland in
1906. The First World War produced social upheavals in Europe and secured the
vote for women in the Netherlands and the Soviet Union (1917) and, to a limited
extent, in Great Britain (1918). In 1919 Germany followed suit. Under the conditions,
there was less suffrage for women’s in the United States became an
embarrassment. Therefore, in 1920, the country finally adopted the Nineteenth
Amendment to the Constitution granting the right to vote to women. Over seventy
years struggle had finally been won.
Still, as feminists well knew, this success was hardly enough, since sexual
discrimination continued in many other subtle and not so subtle ways. No same
pay for equal work, exclusion from influential positions, and innumerable
specific legal restrictions denied women equal opportunities in American life.
The economic exploitation was common for the women. The feminist movement
therefore supported welfare legislation for maternity and infant care, birth
rate control, stricter labor laws, and government regulation of business. This
led to a vicious "red smear" attack by the established powers which
denounced feminists as "Bolshevik dupes" and "communist conspirators"
and accused them of "undermining the family". Primitive and visible
as they were, these smear tactics proved nevertheless to be very successful.
Many "respectable" middle-class women were frightened away from the
movement and dissuaded from defending their interests.
The first "Equal Rights
Amendment" was introduced in 1923Congress stating: "Men and women
shall have equal rights throughout the United States and every place subject to
its jurisdiction." However, this proposed Amendment created dissent even
within the feminist movement, because it seemed to remove some protective labor
legislation advantageous to women. A long and heated debate ensued in political
conventions, committees, newspapers, journals, and popular magazines. In the
long run, nothing came of it but disunity among women and a political influence
decline.
It was not until the 1960's that feminism experienced another upsurge. In 1953
Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex had appeared in English translation, an
influential book that analyzed the history and implications of female
subjection in Western culture. In 1963 Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique,
the American housewife and mother were criticizing prevailing stereotypical
role . Also in 1963 a Presidential Commission issued a report American Women
which recommended a number of moderate reforms to improve their grade. In
response to these and other developments, In 1966 the National Organization for
Women (NOW) was founded and soon became the largest and best known of various
new women's organizations. NOW almost instantly took up the fight for an Equal
Rights Amendment and demanded several other drastic reforms, such as the right
to abortion. In the meantime, these demands found much wider support than
previously, because many middle-class women had become radicalized through the
renewed black civil rights struggle, voter registration drives in the South,
and the peace movement against the American war in Southeast Asia. Sexual and
reproductive liberation could be discussed more openly, as the whole country
had become more sensitive to issues of fairness and individual liberty. In the
early 1970's the abortion issue was suddenly settled by the U.S. Supreme Court
in the feminists' favor. Moreover, Congress finally passed an Equal Rights
Amendment stating "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or
abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex." No
matter how difficult and lengthy the struggle for ratification may turn out to
be, and no matter how often it may fail, women were hoping that the amendment will ultimately be adopted.
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