DBQ QUESTION

Discuss the ways in which the Progressive Era altered the role of women in the United States.

DOCUMENT A

WOMEN IN THE LABOR FORCE, 1900-1930 Year Women in Labor Force % Women in Labor Force                 % of Women in Labor Force              Single               Married   Widow/Divorced 1900   4,997,000 18.1 66.2 15.4 18.4 1910   7,640,000 NA 60.2 24.7 15.0 1920   8,347,000 77.0 77.0 23.0 ------ 1930 10,632,000 21.9 53.9 28.9 17.2

SOURCE:   The American People: Creating a Nation and a Society

DOCUMENT B

SOURCE:  Postcard from the 1911 California campaign.

DOCUMENT C

TWELVE REASONS WHY WOMEN SHOULD VOTE 1.    BECAUSE those who obey the laws should help to choose those who make the               laws. 2.    BECAUSE laws affect women as much as men. 3.    BECAUSE laws which affect WOMEN are now passed without consulting them. 4.    BECAUSE laws affecting CHILDREN should include the women's point of view as          well as the man's. 5.    BECAUSE laws affecting the HOME are voted on in every session of the legislature. 6.    BECAUSE women have experience which would be helpful to legislation. 7.    BECAUSE to deprive women of the vote is to lower their position in common                     estimation. 8.    BECAUSE having the vote would increase the sense of responsibility among women         toward questions of public importance. 9.    BECAUSE public spirited mothers make public spirited sons. 10.  BECAUSE 8,000,000 women in the United States are wage workers, and the         conditions under which they work are controlled by law. 11.  BECAUSE the objections against their having the vote are based on prejudice, not         on reason. 12.  BECAUSE to sum up all reasons in one---IT IS FOR THE COMMON GOOD OF ALL.                                                                              VOTES FOR WOMEN

SOURCE:  Woman Suffrage Leaflet, c. 1915.

DOCUMENT D

SOURCE:  "Woman to the Rescue," a pro-suffrage cartoon from  The Crisis, May 1916.

DOCUMENT E

I found from records concerning women of the underworld that eighty-five per cent of them come from parents averaging nine living children.  And fifty percent of these are mentally defective.        We know, too, that among mentally defective parents the birth rate is four times as great as that of the normal parent....         Is woman's health not to be considered?  Is she to remain a producing machine?  Is she to have time to think, to study, to care for herself?  Man cannot travel to his goal alone.  And until woman has knowledge to control birth she cannot get the time to think and develop.  Until she has the time to think, neither the suffrage question nor the social question nor the labor question will interest her, and she will remain the drudge that she is and her husband the slave that he is just as long as they continue to supply the market with cheap labor....         You will agree with me that a woman should be free.  Yet no adult woman who is ignorant of the means to prevent conception can call herself free....          My work has been to arouse interest in the subject of birth control in America, and in this, I feel that I have been successful....          The free clinic is the solution for our problem.  It will enable women to help themselves, and will have much to do with disposing of this soul-crushing charity which is at best a mere temporary relief.           Woman must be protected from incessant childbearing before she can actively participate in the social life.  She must triumph over Nature's and Man's laws which have kept her in bondage.  Just as man has triumphed over Nature by the use of electricity, shipbuilding, bridges, etc., so must woman triumph over the laws which have made her a childbearing machine.

SOURCE:   Margaret Sanger, The Case for Birth Control, 1917.

DOCUMENT F

World War I proved a boon for the woman suffrage movement....We talk of the army in the field as one and the army at home as another.  We are not two armies; we are one----absolutely one army----and we must work together.  Unless the army at home does its duty faithfully, the army in the field will be unable to carry to a victorious end this war which you and I believe is the great way that shall bring to the world the thing that is nearest our hearts----democracy, that "those who submit to authority shall have a voice in the government" and that when they have that voice peace shall reign among the nations of men....           The United States Government, learning from the weaknesses and the mistakes of the governments across the sea, immediately after declaring war on Germany knew that it was wise to mobilize not only the man power of the nation but the woman power....It has been discovered that men and women alike have within them great reserve power, great forces which are called out by emergencies and the demands of a time like this....            The first thing we are asked to do is to provide the enthusiasm, inspiration and patriotism to make men want to fight, and we are to send them away with a smile!  That is not much to ask of a mother!  We are to maintain a perfect calm after we have furnished all this inspiration and enthusiasm...keep the home sweet and peaceful and happy, keep society on a level, look after business, buy enough but not too much and wear some of our old clothes....             The Woman's Committee of the Council of the National Defense now asks for your cooperation, that we may be what the Government would have us be, soldiers at home, defending the interests of the home, while the men are fighting with the gallant Allies who are laying down their lives that this world may be a safe place and that men and women may know the meaning of democracy, which is that we are one great family of God.  That, and that only, is the ideal of democracy for which our flag stands.

SOURCE:   Anna Howard Shaw, Woman's Committee of the Council of National Defense, 1917.

DOCUMENT G

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

SOURCE:  19th Amendment to the US Constitution, 1920.

DOCUMENT H

SOURCE:  Dr. and Madame Strong's Corsets, 1885.

DOCUMENT I

WHY WE DO NOT APPROVE OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE BECAUSE:  We feel that the ballot makes absolutely no difference in the economic                    status of woman.  Whether she votes or not , her charities, great and                     small, will continue, professions will extend diplomas to her intelligence                    and trade will grant recompense to her ability.  As for the protection of the                    ballot to working women, it will protect them no farther than it protects men                     who, in spite of their voting power, find themselves unable to cope with labor                    conditions by legislation and form themselves into unions outside of law and                    law making. BECAUSE:  Our hospital Boards, our social and civic service work, our child welfare                     committees and countless other clubs and industries for the general                     welfare and uplift need women who can five non-partisan and unselfish                     service, the worth of which service would be greatly lessened by political                     affiliations. BECAUSE:  Behind law there must always be force to make it effective.  If legislation                     was shaped by a majority of women over men we should soon have, not                      government, but chaos. BECAUSE:  It is an attested fact that politics degrade women more than women purify                     politics. BECAUSE:  We believe that American men would speedily remedy all conditions                     needing reform if urged with half the force now brought to beat in favor of                     suffrage. BECAUSE:  We believe that the interests of all women are as safe in the hands of men                    as in those of other women. BECAUSE:  Thorough investigation of the laws of suffrage states shows that non-suffrage                     states have by far the better and more humane laws, and that all laws are                     more strictly enforced than in suffrage states. BECAUSE:  We believe that if franchise for women would better general conditions,                     there would be some evidence of that betterment in states where it has                     been exercised for twenty and up to forty-four years. BECAUSE:  Women make little use of suffrage when it is given them.  School suffrage                    has been a lamentable failure, the women vote averaging scarcely two                    per cent in any state. BECAUSE:  The energies o women are engrossed by their present duties and interests,                    from which men cannot relieve them, and there is great need of better                     performance of their present work rather than diversion to new fields of                     activity. BECAUSE:  The suffrage movement develops sex hatred which is a menace to society. BECAUSE:  Of the alliance of suffrage with socialism which advocates free love and                     institutional life for children. BECAUSE:  The greatest menace to the morals of today lies in the efforts of suffragists                     to convince the world that vice is predominant.  In the mad rush for the                      ballot and consequent advertisement of immorality, reverence, has been                    dethroned and reticence annihilated.  It is high time for the right thinking,                    purity-loving women to arise and undo the terrific impress made on the                    public mind by the preachments of these pursuers of vice. BECAUSE: The great majority of intelligent, refined and educated women do not                     want enfranchisement.  They realize no sense of injustice such as                     expressed by the small minority of suffragists.  They have all the rights                     freedom they desire, and consider their present trusts most sacred  and,                    important.  They feel that the duties which naturally must ever revert to                    their sex are such that none but themselves can perform and that political                     responsibilities could not be borne by them without the sacrifice of the                      highest interests of their families and of society.                                                Nebraska Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage

SOURCE:   Anti-suffrage leaflet, c. 1914. Denison Library, Scripps College.

DOCUMENT J

Without expressing any opinion on the proper qualifications for voting, we call attention to the significant facts that in every State there are more women who can read and write than the whole number of illiterate male voters; more white women who can read and write than all negro voters; more American women who can read and write than all foreign voters; so that the enfranchisement of such women would settle the vexed question of rule by illiteracy, whether of homegrown or foreign-born production.

SOURCE:  NAWSA  Proceedings, 1893.

DOCUMENT K

What college life is to the young woman, club life is to the woman of riper years, who amidst the responsibilities and cares of home life still wishes to keep abreast of the time, still longs for the companionship of those who, like herself, do not wish to cease to be students because they have left school.

SOURCE:   Ella D. Clymer speaking to the National Council of Women, 1891.

DOCUMENT L

I wanted all the freedom, all the opportunity, all the equality there was in the world.  I wanted to belong to the human race, not to a ladies' aid society, to the human race.

SOURCE:    Rheta Childe Dorr challenged previous generations' emphasis on female difference.

	DOCUMENT  REFERENCES
A	Nash, Gary B., and Julie Roy Jeffrey, eds.  The American People: Creating a Nation and a          Society.  New York: Harper and Row, 1986.   775.
B	Wheeler, Marjorie Spruill, ed.  One Woman, One Vote: rediscovering the woman           suffrage.  Troutdale: New Sage Press, 1995.
C	Wheeler, Marjorie Spruill, ed.  One Woman, One Vote: rediscovering the woman          suffrage.   Troutdale: New Sage Press, 1995.
D	Wheeler, Marjorie Spruill, ed.  One Woman, One Vote: rediscovering the woman          suffrage.   Troutdale: New Sage Press, 1995.
E	Margaret, Sanger.  The Case for Birth Control.  New York: 1917.
F	Shaw, Anna Howard.  The Concise History of Woman Suffrage.  Illinois:           University of Illinois Press, 1978.
G	Garraty, John A.  The American Nation.  8th Ed.  New York: Harper Collins           College Publishers, 1995.
H	Lorence, James J.  Enduring Voices.  Vol 2 3rd Ed.  Lexington: Heath and           Company, 1996.
I	Wheeler, Marjorie Spruill, ed.  One Woman, One Vote: Rediscovering the Woman          Suffrage.   Troutdale: New Sage Press, 1995.
J	Nawsa Proceedings, 1893, 84, quoted in Kraditor, Ideas of the Woman Suffrage          Movement, 110.
K	Ella D. Clymer speaking to the National Council of Women, 1891, quoted in Rothman,           Woman's Proper Place, 65.
L	Dorr, Rheta Childe.  A Woman of Fifty.  2nd Ed.  New York: Funk and Wagnalls,            1924.  101.

DBQ Question created by: Ms. Angelica Pancrudo Class of 2001 Maria Regina H. S. Hartsdale, NY created in:  April, 2000