Interpreting Secondary Sources

1. Women in Industrializing America

2. Stacy A. Cordery

3. The origins of modern Americas effect on women.

4. Thesis: The increased number of women in the labor force, in the westward movement, and the breakdown of the separation of men and women inspired women to have political campaigns and to push for women's rights. The women of this age were typically white, middle classed, Protestant, native born, married, and living in a small town that has better education opportunities. There was also a decrease in the amount of children being born during this time.

5.

• Women were mainly confined to staying home but during Industrialization they obtained time saving appliances giving then time to have other jobs.
• Organizations were formed to provide charitable relief. These reform groups used willing workforces to raise money, petition state and local governments, and raised awareness for the less fortunate. For example, the Women's Christion Temperance Union (WCTU) fought to prevent the abuse and usage of alcohol by praying bars and other forms of awareness.
• Women spent most of their days caring for their children. Her only opportunity to join a womans club was if she had a servant or her kids were grown.
• By the turn of the century one in seven women were employed as a way to supplement their husbands insufficient income. Those that began working attempted to correct the wretched living and working conditions.
• Anne Firor Scott credits club women with "inventing Progressivism" where women began putting themselves into the world around them by creating study clubs among other groups and objects. These women advocated education such as parent education, vacation schools, and special education for disabled children. They also created innovations such as visiting nurses, libraries, school sanitation and public health, calling for the regulation of water and milk, pure food and drug administration, sanitary garbage disposal legislation, dental clinics, hospitals, baby clinics, school lunch programs, and public facilities such as laundries.
• Anna J. H. Pennybacker was known for being leaders of many women's clubs, dedicating herself to organized womanhood
• Black women were denied access to politics, the legal system, and governmental support. Their various clubs would do many actions to help the less fortunate such as The Art and Study Club of Moline, Illinois, visited the sick and clothed the poor. Ag=frican American women elsewhere organized home for the elderly, juvenile delinquents, working women, unwed mothers, and orphans. The first club to organize was the COLORED WOMEN'S LEAGUE. They combined with THE NATIONAL FEDERATION OF AFRO-AMERICAN WOMEN to form THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATIONOF COLORED WOMEN.
• Women began to express their political voices as associations speaking infront of hostile crowds, lobbying male politicians, managed finances and wrote platforms. There was increasing membership and rapidly multiplying women's associations,.
• The Gilded Age the older natural-rights justification for suffrage gave way to an ideology that emphasized differences between men and women. Women by emphasizing their "true womanhood".
• Suffrage was the most important topic when concerning education, religion, property rights, and marriage and divorce laws.
• NATIONAL WOMENS SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION- wanted a federal amendment for women's suffrage. Combined with AWSA to form the MAWSA. none ever had any real success during the gilded age.
• Numbers of women began living among the poor to create a safe environment for families against crime, disease, unhygienic living conditions, unsafe work places and unscrupulous employers who would take advantage of the newly arrived. One of the most famous being the HULL HOUSE who fought to have 8 hour work days, uplift working immigrants, and a minimum wage.
• Females provided labor to fuel industrialization comprising 14% of workforce in 1870; 16%-1890. Women's wages were much lower than men's barely giving them enough to live on.
• Foreign born women had the most domestic positions even though employers sought for native born white women.
• Working conditions included 10 hour days (8 at turn of century), no safety codes and no regulations regarding breaks, vacations, retirement, workers' compensation, injury pay or time off, or sexual harassment. Began striking (usually unsuccessful).
• Increase in college educated women. Most who earned doctoral degrees from 1877 to 1924 remained single. Could have careers more easily in medical fields rather than law. Science remained closed to women as well as ministry.
• Increased participation in sports.
• Industrialization, immigration, and urbanization caused a population increase in the East, the Homestead Acts and the lure of quick riches drew Americans to the West. Some women established their own homesteads. Or they built community structures- womens clubs, belonged to other clubs like The Populists, The Grange, and the Farmers Alliance.
• Native American women did not really hear about the cult of true womanhood. Native Americans, both men and women, would share a lot of tasks that were seen as "womans" work since they were not as touched by industrialization. Some enjoyed higher stuses because of religious or medical skills.
• Reform efforts had demonstrated the ability of women not only to survive but also prosper outside of their "proper" field.
• Women worked a lot as farmers to help with their families low income.

6.

• Were there any movements to stop the women's reform groups?
• Where did the money come from? Donations?
• Why did the women put a lot of focus into alcohol prevention?
• What was the non-typical woman like?
• Why did numbers of children decrease? Bad fertility or were the women given more of a choice on their family size?
• What were the major blowbacks from increased campaigning for women's rights?
• How did the women's place in society chance at the end of the 1900's- was it permanent?

1. The Immigrant Experience in the Gilded Age

2. Roger Daniels
3. The treatment of the immigrants during the Gilded Age.
4. Treatment of the immigrants during this time period is very significant in describing the Gilded Age. The various immigrants lived in different regions of America based on where their family lived and where they had available work opportunities. Some immigrants (such as the Irish) seemed to dominate two crucial institutions which were municipal politics and the Roman Catholic Church. These various groups differed from each other with where they lived, how they interacted with people, labor unions, politics, and the movements occurring at the time.
5.

• Immigrants included people from Italy, Germany, China, Ireland, Britain, Southern and Eastern Europe, Scandinavia,  French Canadians, Slovakia, people of Greco Latin descent, and Asiatic.
• Between 1866 and 1900, 13,259,469 immigrants entered America. Throughout this period, the foreign-born population was predominantly male.
• three fifths of the immigrants came from Western Europe, most from Germany, Britain, Ireland, and Scandinavia. Pre-civil war these immigrants made up 95% of the total but twenty years after they were just two fifths.
• Old Immigrants: western European immigrants that mainly contained that of Irish and other Britons, Germans, and Scandinavians ending in early 1800's. New Immigration: Eastern and Southern Europeans that of Italians, Poles, Southern Slavs, Jews, and Greeks ending in 1914 with WWI.
• Most immigrants paid for their way to America during the Gilded Age hoping to improve their life.
• Transportation improved from sail to steamship which meant shorter crossing times, better conditions and usually lower fares. Tickets could be paid in the New World so that a member in the Old World could travel to there.
• Most seeked employment which was mostly in urban and industrial occupations.
• 1/2 of immigrants lived in Northeast which had less than 1/3 of nations population. More than 2/5ths lived in North central states- almost 1/3 of Americas population. In the nine of the cities that have more than 25,000 people, immigrants made up more than 40% of them- N.Y, Chicago, San Francisco, Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee, Scranton, Pennsylvania, Lawrence, Massachusetts and Detroit.
• The largest ethnic groups were the Irish and Germans comprised 14.5 and 11.5% of large cities.
• By 1900 the Census Bureau was dividing the foreign born population into 8 groups (Teutons, Irish, British Americans, British, Slavs, Scandinavians, Greco Latin's, and Asiatics).
• Scandinavian immigration became urban. British immigrants=the invisible immigrants. Some were capitalists, others tradesmen, industrial workers, and remittance men. Overrepresented in commercial and skilled worker categories.
•  Southern and eastern immigrants dominated immigration flows in the final decade of the century came mostly at the very bottom of American urban industrial society.
• Chinese- crucial in Far West. They built railroads, engaged in mining, cleared land, and were pioneers in market gardening and other forms of agriculture.
• French Canadians- only group who migrated chiefly by rail.
• IMPORTANT. Those that entered US during this period were first to deal with federal restriction and regulation of immigrants.
• The Protestant Know Nothings thought catholic immigrants to be a great threat to the Republic. They never won restriction of the immigrants and tightening of naturalization laws.
• HOMESTEAD ACT OF 1862- those that declared their intention of becoming an American citizen could have the same rights as American citizens. After the war the naturalization statues expanded to include blacks.
• US and China allow citizens to migrate freely and to change their homes as they please. The treaty was mainly supposed to support trade put immigration and foreign policy at loggerheads. A new regulation allowed the US to regulate, limit and suspend Chinese immigration and residence. So in 1882 Chester Arthur signed the Chinese Exclusion Act suspending Chinese immigration (laborers) for 10 years and after that another 10 years were added.
• The French Canadians became the eastern Chinese, said they did not care anything of the American Institution.
• The Anglo Saxon Complex- campaigned for an immigration policy based on discrimination. Chief spokesman=Henry Cabot Lodge, settled on a literacy test to bring the best ethno culture balance. All the literacy bills were denied.

6.

• Were the French Canadians the most despised immigrant groups?
• What was the naturalization process like? Was its basis the Homestead Act?

1. The African American Experience

2. Leslie H. Fishel Jr.
3. How the post-civil war changes affected the African Americans.
4. The affect of social, political, and economic changes/decisions on the African Americans during the Gilded Age and in what ways they responded to them.
5.

• Country experienced revolutions in economic activity, territorial expansion, demography, class structure, education, and politics.
• The African American people had power and influence which combined with perseverance brought leverage for them in the Reconstruction years. They began to serve in Congress and state legislatures and in federal, state, and local governments at varying levels of authority.
• With the blacks newfound freedom they gained the ability to move to another plantation/region which caused a great population boom as families were reunited. They also gained the ability to find higher paying jobs which included farming, building railroads, mining coal and phosphate, making turpentine, and lumbering.
• Migration into North increased the growth of urban centers.
• Blacks had little political support and less economic opportunity.
• The biggest migration post-civil war was the migration of Texas, Mississippi, and Louisiana into Kansas. "Kansas Fever" This founded a black town.
• Slave Plantation turned into TENANT PLANTATION SYSTEM  which let farmers empty black workers but they had to pay rent  while credit system gave him money for seeds. Sharecropping slit return into shares for landlord and tenant. Kept tenants poor and in debt. Major crop was COTTON.
• Sugar plantations of Louisiana and cotton of Virginia and N.C. hired workers for wages not tenants. Instead they had seasonal employment and low pay.
• Civil Rights Cases: Through Justice Joseph P. Bradley they said public accommodations shouldn't have to be protected against racial discrimination which is inconsistent with previous cases such as Prigg v. Pennsylvania and Minn v. Illinois where the court held that both civil rights and public nature of public accommodations were limited and that neither the 13 or 14th amendment permits congressional implementation of the Act. Justice John Marshall Harlan said congress did have protective legislation.
• Garfield- chasm closed through education. Chester A. Arthur didn't really care for blacks.
• South wanted to cancel blacks votes. Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee and Florida introduced the poll tax, multiple box voting, or the secret ballot in late 1800s. Next decade a flurry of laws restricted the franchise by requiring a literacy and/or property test. By 1908 former confederate states had removed most blacks and a number or poor or illiterate whites from the electorate.
• Afro-American National League- wanted to act on economic issues. Was a victim of bad organizing and financing.
• ^^^ Competition popped up with the popular farmers movement, The Grange, which formed cooperatives and lobbied state legislators for a graduated income tax and railroad and telegraph regulation.
• The Wheels, Alliances, and Knights initially welcome black members but as the Farmers Alliance grew to become the dominant agricultural organization it yielded to white majority pressure and spurned black members.
• Blacks at one time had their own Colored Farmers Alliance and wanted to cooperate with the white farmers but the whites unacceptance of the blacks voting refrained them from doing so.
• When the Alliance movement formed into POPULISM and that into the POPULIST PARTY blacks found white men like Tom Watson who voiced for economic interests. Election of 1892- some blacks voted for democratic or populist party. The parties defeat led to its demise ending the black effort to cooperate on economical and political issues with southern whites. There were no political measures- bills or elections, to help blacks up to WWI.
• African Americans established schools that were nondiscriminatory but they were underfunded during reconstruction. 2/5ths black children were enrolled in school. Schools would stay open a month or two then close so children could pick cotton.
• Tuskagee was the first industrial school manage by blacks and taught agricultural skills such as farming, brickmaking, carpentering, printing, black-smithing, and house keeping and sewing for girls. Booker T. Washington added as future offerings, tinsmithing, shoemaking, painting and broom making. It had little to do with expanding industries, iron steel, and textiles. Focused on traditional manual trades.
• Buffalo soldiers strung wire, had military posts, opened roads, mapped unknown territories, and located water sources for new settlers.
• Southern whites justified violence against blacks out of fear of color and denial of brain. From 1882-1899 over 2500 blacks were lynched. Excuses included rapes, abuse of white women, and occasional murder.
• Convicts in prison were leased to railroad builders, planters, and mine owners for a pittance b/c of escalated costs. People were starved, beat, murdered, and raped.
• Blacks defensive mechanisms against violence included maturing social stratification and an expanding adherence to the church.
• Some major cities had a lot of African American aristocracy within them.
• Blacks had an impulse of intellectual pursuits making them form literacy clubs. They had dances and cotillions, elaborate weddings, and banquets. The light blacks made up the social elites whereas darker ones were the rank and file. There was no middle class. The black elite: barbering, teaching, government service, small business, and agriculture or at the low income end of professions could be counted as the middle class. The black elite didn't believe it. Northern and southern blacks lacked access to cash, credit, good jobs and upward mobility.
• Northern black elitists feared the influx of southern blacks because they felt it would threaten their fragile power. The southern blacks had different speeches, less educated, farm oriented, darker, and different religious patterns.
• Churches were the largest and most elaborate economic, social, and political institutions organized by African Americans.
• Upper class church services were more participatory and warmer in feeling. Underclass services was more open and inclusive; sermons invited response, hymns were sung with abandon. A center of social life and intercourse.
• Segregated schools in North nut by 19-- most northern states had prohibited separate schools based on race. The south usually segregated schools, housing, and businesses.
• Key case was PLESSY V FERGUSON in 1896 in which a majority found a Louisiana segregation laws constitutional. Law required separate RR's for whites and blacks. Court said this restriction didn't infringe on the liberty of black people enunciated by 13th amendment or rights as citizens. Said it wouldn't lead to expansion of segregation.
• Booker T. Washington said social segregation is okay but whites and blacks should cooperate in economic spheres. Atlanta Compromise: Don't permit our (blacks) grievances to overshadow our opportunities. Said millions could pull the load upward or force it down.
• 1896 marked the first Harvard Ph.D. to a black person, W. E. B. Du Bois, powerful race studies and detailed historical and sociological study.
• Black women wanted same career opportunities as white women.
• A low point in the lives of blacks and whites was when the Northern whites perpetrated physical violence, economic repression, political exclusion, narrowed educational opportunities, and social ostracism.