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U.S. History 1877-Present 5: Prohibition 6651 Views


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Description:

Hm...working and contributing to society, or eating bonbons at home? Tough choice for us at here at Shmoop. Maybe we should work at a bonbon factory?

Language:
English Language

Transcript

00:04

Besides alcohol the women's Christian Temperance Union also [Womens temperance union together]

00:07

tackled other social problems like prostitution, sanitation and labor rights

00:12

how by twisting the idea of the women's sphere... they said prostitutes were women

00:21

who had fallen because of their fathers or husbands drinking and people you can

00:25

imagine how much sexual abuse happened in those unregulated days as well well

00:29

this drove the women to the ultimate sin just to get money to support themselves [Cash falls from above]

00:33

well it had nothing to do with the WCTU trying to protect prostitutes from

00:38

male violence wink wink the WCTU also argued what poor

00:42

sanitation prevented mothers from raising healthy children they said

00:47

unfair labor practices kept women working in factories when they should be [Woman working in a factory]

00:50

home caring for their husbands and their kids they were smart to connect their

00:54

social causes not to women's rebellion or women's liberation but to the women

00:59

sphere how could men argue with what they invented of course the idea that

01:05

America was great because the whole family could be supported by one man's [Man holds out bag of cash]

01:08

income only worked in middle and upper classes for the poor which was the

01:13

largest class at that time one guy working in a shoe factory wasn't going [Man carrying selection of shoes]

01:17

to support much of anything....Lower class families generally had lots of

01:21

kids and everyone had to work to make ends meet mothers and daughters work

01:25

12-hour days 6 days a week and not all of them long to be able to stay home and

01:29

eat bonbons many of them wanted to contribute to society in a public way to [Group of women in uniform]

01:34

earn their own money and to get out in the world because hey bonbons are also

01:38

great on the run.... middle and upper-class women didn't all want to stay at home [Woman with 4 babies at home]

01:44

and be baby machines either many spearheaded the way for social reform in

01:48

the cities... Jane Addams opened Hull House in Chicago in 1889 the rich white lady

01:54

who ran it and other settlement houses worked with immigrant women to improve

01:58

their lives then they recruited the immigrant women [Immigrant women sitting on a bench]

02:00

to help fight for equality pretty slick way to build up an army

02:04

right wealthy women also supported the poor mostly Jewish immigrant women who

02:09

worked in the Shirtwaist factories of New York City when those workers went

02:13

on strike facing down the men who used every

02:15

dirty trick in the book to knock them down these rich white lady stood with [Guys holding im with stupid signs and woman appears in the middle]

02:19

the workers of course plenty of middle-class and wealthy American women

02:23

didn't see any common ground with poor immigrant Jewish or black women this

02:28

drove a wedge into the women's movement as the non-white non wealthy women of

02:33

America felt ignored and invisible in a white dominated world but this didn't

02:39

stop women of every class from doing their bit to smash the golden cage that [Crowd of women and a golden cage appears]

02:42

was the women's sphere it was a time of great struggle for women but let's face

02:47

it the golden cage might have had it worse [Rifle crushes golden cage]

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