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Women and the Progressive Era
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Progressivism shaped the agenda of the feminist movement in turn-of-the-century America.
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Evaluate the validity of the statement above, using the documents provided and your knowledge of the time period.
Primary source: Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wall Paper, novella, 1899.
Background information: Charlotte Perkins Gilman was a well-educated American woman who became depressed after her marriage in 1884. Diagnosed with neurasthenia and prescribed the "rest-cure,"she later wrote about her experience in The Yellow Wall Paper, published in 1899.
[ . . . ]
John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage.
John is practical in the extreme. He has no patience with faith, an intense horror of superstition, and he scoffs openly at any talk of things not to be felt and seen and put down in figures.
John is a physician, and perhaps—(I would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind)—perhaps that is one reason I do not get well faster.
You see he does not believe I am sick!
And what can one do?
If a physician of high standing, and one's own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression—a slight hysterical tendency—what is one to do?
My brother is also a physician, and also of high standing, and he says the same thing.
So I take phosphates or phosphites—whichever it is, and tonics, and journeys, and air, and exercise, and am absolutely forbidden to "work" until I am well again.
Personally, I disagree with their ideas.
Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good.
But what is one to do?
[ . . . ]
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Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wall Paper, (Boston: Small, Maynard, 1899).
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Primary source: Adella Hunt Logan, "Why the National Association of Colored Women Should Become Part of the National Council of Women of the United States," 1899.
Background information: Adella Hunt Logan, a leading member of the Tuskegee Women's Club, argued on behalf of the National Association of Colored Women that black women should be included in the National Council of Women in the United States.
We shall be better understood and, we trust, more highly esteemed, by the people of other races and nations, if we are given opportunities to work in sympathy with them, rather than be left out of their plans altogether, or at best, made the subject of their[?] missionary endeavors.
Ignorance of each other is at the bottom of the prejudice existing between the races. This ignorance is the natural and direct outcome of separation. There are valuable lessons to be learned by both races by a closer relationship. This is true also of the clubs.
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Adella Hunt Logan, "Why the National Association of Colored Women Should Become Part of the National Council of Women of the United States," The National Association Notes 3, no. 8 (December 1899): 1 (NACW microfilm, part 1, reel 23, frames 326-27), at http://womhist.binghamton.edu/nacw/doc9.htm.
Courtesy of the Women and Social Movements Web site, a project of the Center for the Historical Study of Women and Gender at the State University of New York at Binghamton.
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Primary source: Jane Addams, Twenty Years at Hull House, memoir, 1910.
Background information: Jane Addams, a leading social worker during the Progressive Era, founded the Hull House settlement for immigrants in Chicago in 1889. She wrote about her experiences there in Twenty Years at Hull House, published in 1910.
[ . . . ]
You may remember the forlorn feeling which occasionally seizes you when you arrive early in the morning a stranger in a great city: the stream of laboring people goes past you as you gaze through the plate-glass window of your hotel; you see hard working men lifting great burdens; you hear the driving and jostling of huge carts and your heart sinks with a sudden sense of futility. The door opens behind you and you turn to the man who brings you in your breakfast with a quick sense of human fellowship. You find yourself praying that you may never lose your hold on it all. A more poetic prayer would be that the great mother breasts of our common humanity, with its labor and suffering and its homely comforts, may never be withheld from you. You turn helplessly to the waiter and feel that it would be almost grotesque to claim from him the sympathy you crave because civilization has placed you apart, but you resent your position with a sudden sense of snobbery.
[ . . . ]
Other motives which I believe make toward the Settlement are the result of a certain renaissance going forward in Christianity. The impulse to share the lives of the poor, the desire to make social service, irrespective of propaganda, express the spirit of Christ, is as old as Christianity itself. We have no proof from the records themselves that the early Roman Christians, who strained their simple art to the point of grotesqueness in their eagerness to record a "good news" on the walls of the catacombs, considered this good news a religion. Jesus had no set of truths labeled Religious. On the contrary, his doctrine was that all truth is one, that the appropriation of it is freedom. . . .
[ . . . ]
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Jane Addams, Twenty Years at Hull House (New York: Macmillan, 1910), 91–98.
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Primary source: "Striking shirtwaist-makers selling copies of The Call,", photograph, 1910.
Background information: Many Jewish women were very involved in labor and socialist movements, as seen in this 1910 photograph of striking shirtwaist-makers selling copies of The Call, the New York socialist daily.
"Striking shirtwaist-makers selling copies of The Call," in Munseys's Magazine, (1910), reprinted in Moses Rischin, The Promised City: New York's Jews, 1870–1914 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1962), after p. 208.
Courtesy of the History Project at University of California at Davis.
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Primary source: Elinore Pruitt Stewart to Mrs. Coney, letter, 1911.
Background information: Elinore Pruitt Stewart was one of many female homesteaders. In 1914, her letters were published in Letters of a Woman Homesteader. One letter, dated October 14, 1911, is reproduced below.
DEAR MRS. CONEY,--
I think you must be expecting an answer to your letter by now, so I will try to answer as many of your questions as I remember. Your letter has been mislaid. We have been very much rushed all this week. We had the thresher crew two days. I was busy cooking for them two days before they came, and have been busy ever since cleaning up after them. Clyde has taken the thresher on up the valley to thresh for the neighbors, and all the men have gone along, so the children and I are alone. No, I shall not lose my land, although it will be over two years before I can get a deed to it. The five years in which I am required to "prove up" will have passed by then. I could n't have held my homestead if Clyde had also been proving up, but he had accomplished that years ago and has his deed, so I am allowed my homestead. Also I have not yet used my desert right, so I am still entitled to one hundred and sixty acres more. I shall file on that much some day when I have sufficient money of my own earning. The law requires a cash payment of twenty-five cents per acre at the filing, and one dollar more per acre when final proof is made. I should not have married if Clyde had not promised I should meet all my land difficulties unaided. I wanted the fun and the experience. For that reason I want to earn every cent that goes into my own land and improvements myself. Sometimes I almost have a brain-storm wondering how I am going to do it, but I know I shall succeed; other women have succeeded. I know of several who are now where they can laugh at past trials. Do you know? -- I am a firm believer in laughter. I am real superstitious about it. I think if Bad Luck came along, he would take to his heels if some one laughed right loudly. . .
Your friend,
ELINORE STEWART.
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Elinore Pruitt Stewart to Mrs. Coney (14 October 1911), Letters of a Woman Homesteader (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1914): 134–35.
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Primary source: Margaret Sanger, "Comstockery in America," journal article, 1915.
Background information: Margaret Sanger became nationally famous for organizing a birth-control movement. In this 1915 issue of the International Socialist Review, Sanger discusses working women.
"The Woman Rebel" told the Working Woman that there is no freedom for her until she has this knowledge which will enable her to say if she will become a mother or not. The fewer children she had to cook, wash and toil for, the more leisure she would have to read, think and develop. That freedom demands leisure, and her first freedom must be in her right of herself over her own body; the right to say what she will do with it in marriage and out of it; the right to become a mother, or not, as she desires and sees fit to do; that all these rights swing around the pivot of the means to prevent conception, and every woman had the right to have this knowledge if she wished it. . .
I resolved, after a visit to France, where children are loved and wanted and cared for and educated, to devote my time and effort in giving this information to women who applied for it. I resolved to defy the law, not behind a barricade of law books and technicalities, but by giving the information to the workers directly in factory and workshop...
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Margaret Sanger, "Comstockery in America," International Socialist Review (1915), 46–49.
Courtesy of the Margaret Sanger Papers Project, History Department, New York University.
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Primary source: Joe Hill, "The Rebel Girl," song, c. 1916.
Background information: Joe Hill, lyricist and labor activist, wrote songs for the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), including this tribute to the women involved in the IWW.
There are women of many descriptions
In this queer world, as every one knows,
Some are living in beautiful mansions,
And are wearing the finest of clothes.
There are blue-blooded queens and princesses,
Who have charms made of diamonds and pearl;
But the only and Thoroughbred Lady
Is the Rebel Girl.
-Chorus-
That's the Rebel Girl. That's the Rebel Girl.
To the working class she's a precious pearl.
She brings courage, pride and joy
To the Fighting Rebel Boy.
We've had girls before
But we need some more
In the Industrial Workers of the World,
For it's great to fight for freedom
With a Rebel Girl.
Yes, her hands may be harden'd from labor
And her dress may not be very fine;
But a heart in her bosom is beating
That is true to her class and kind.
And the grafters in terror are trembling
When her spite and defiance she'll hurl.
For the only and Thoroughbred Lady
Is the Rebel Girl.
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Joe Hill, "The Rebel Girl," in Little Red Songbook, 34th ed. (Chicago: 1973); reprinted, 100 Key Documents in American Democracy, Peter Levy, ed. (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1994), 244.
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Primary source: Southern New York Branch of the American Association of Unviersity Women, mintues of meetings, 1901 & 1908.
Background information: Frances Johnson was the first recipient of a college loan from a branch of the American Association of University Women. This enabled her to attend Cornell University. She is discussed in the minutes of the branch, published in 1925.
I. Minutes. . . May 17, 1901, Papers of the American Association of University Women, Binghamton University Special Collections, Notebook 1.
The committee on scholarship announced that four applications were received before May 7; and that the loan has been granted to Frances Johnson who expects to go to Cornell. The decision was made on four points: Health, the need of money, character, scholarship above the average.
IV. Minutes. . . March 20, 1908, Papers of the American Association of University Women, Binghamton University Special Collections, Notebook 2, p.9.
Miss Johnson gave a talk on "The Growth of City Governments."
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Minutes of the Southern New York Branch of the American Association of Unviersity Women from meetings 17 May 1901 and 20 March 1908, Papers of the American Association of University Women, Binghamton University Special Collections, Notebooks 1 & 2.
Courtesy of the Women and Social Movements web site, a project of the Center for the Historical Study of Women and Gender at the State University of New York at Binghamton.
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Primary source: Barbara Miller Solomon, "Marriage Rates of Alumnae . . . ," statistical table, 1820–1930.
Background information: This table shows the marriage rates of women who graduated from a variety of American colleges during the period of 1820–1930.
Table 4
Marriage Rates of Alumnae at Selected Schools by Graduating Class Cohort, 1820-1930
| Troy Seminary |
Oberlin |
Mount Holyoke |
Vassar |
Radcliffe |
| Years |
% |
Years |
% | Years |
% | Years |
% | Years |
% |
| 1821-32 |
87 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 1833-42 |
83 |
1837-46 | 97.5 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 1843-52 |
80 |
1847-56 | 80.6 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 1853-62 |
79 |
1857-66 |
77.8 |
Pre-1864 | 77.5 |
|
|
|
|
| 1863-72 |
75 |
1867-76 |
68.3 |
1864-73 |
72.1 |
1867-71 | 61.9 |
|
|
| |
|
1877-86 |
69.1 |
1874-83 |
57.1 |
1872-81 |
54.3 |
|
|
| |
| 1887-96 |
60.9 |
1884-93 |
78.2 |
1882-91 |
55.8 |
1883-90 | 40.9 |
| |
|
1897-1906 |
52.6 |
1894-1903 |
52.0 |
1892-1901 |
56.5 |
1891-1900 |
51.3 |
| |
|
1907-16 |
59.5 |
1904-13 |
52.0 |
1902-11 |
60.6 |
1901-10 |
51.1 |
| |
|
1917-21 |
43.7 |
1917-21 |
50.0 |
1912-21 |
75.0 |
1911-20 |
49.6 |
| |
|
|
|
1922-26 | 60.6 |
|
|
|
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| University of Michigan |
Bryn Mawr |
Wellesley |
ACA Census |
Van Kleeck Census of nine colleges |
| Years |
% | Years |
% | Years |
% | Years |
% | Years |
% |
| |
|
|
|
|
|
1869-78 |
55.4 |
Pre-1880 |
57.4 |
| 1889-93 |
55 |
1889-93 |
43 |
1884-93 |
49 |
1879-88 | 50.3 |
1880-90 |
53.0 |
| 1894-1903 |
52 |
1894-1903 |
47 |
1893-1903 |
52 |
1889-98 |
22.5 |
1890-1900 |
50.2 |
| 1904-08 |
52 |
1904-08 |
44 |
1900-09 |
68.3 |
|
|
1900-10 |
46.6 |
| 1909-18 |
60 |
1909-18 |
67 |
1910-19 | 75.3 |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
1920-29 |
83.3 |
|
|
|
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Sources:
Sophia Meranski, "A Census of Mount Holyoke College Alumnae," Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly 8, 3 (October 1924), 149-59.
Ann Miller, ed., A College in Dispersion: Women of Bryn Mawr, 1896-1975 (Bryn Mawr, Pa., 1976), 105.
Mabel Newcomer, A Century of Higher Education for American Women (Washington, D.C., 1959), 212.
Helene Kazanjian Sargeant, "Genus: Alumnae, Species: Wellesley," Wellesley Alumnae Magazine 49,1 (November 1964), 13.
Anne Firor Scott, "The Ever Widening Circle: The Diffusion of Feminist Values from the Troy Female Seminary, 1822-1872," in History of Education Quarterly 28 (Spring 1979), 16.
Barbara M. Solomon, Radcliffe Alumnae Information, 1928. Unpublished analysis of responses to questionnaire.
Mount Holyoke College Alumnae Census (revised). Prepared by The Class in Statistics under the direction of Ruth Olmsted Trux. Mount Holyoke College, Department of Economics and Sociology, January 1937.
Association of Collegiate Alumnae, A Preliminary Statistical Study of College Graduates (Bryn Mawr, Pa., 1917), 121.
Roberta Frankfort, Collegiate Women: Domesticity and Career in Turn-of-the-Century America (New York, 1977), 56, 57, 112, 113.
Louis D. Hartson, "The Occupations of the Oberlin Alumnae," Oberlin Alumni Magazine 23, 4 (January 1927), 12.
Mary Van Kleeck, "A Census of College Women," Journal of the Association of Collegiate Alumnae 11 (May 1918), 577.
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Based on a table from Barbara Miller Solomon, In the Company of Educated Women: A History of Women and Higher Education in America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), 120.
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Primary source: Norton Mezvinsky, "The White Ribbon Reform, 1874-1920," Ph.D. dissertation, 1959.
Background information: This 1959 chart shows the growth in membership of women involved in the movement to prohibit the consumption of alcohol.
Woman's Christian Temperance Union:
Growth of Membership and of Local, Auxiliary Unions
| Year |
# of Local Auxiliary Unions |
# of states and territories with Unions |
Aggregate Membership |
| 1879 |
1,118 |
24 |
26,843 |
| 1883 |
2,580 |
42 |
73,176 |
| 1890 |
7,126 |
48 |
149,527 |
| 1900 |
7,067 |
52 |
168,324 |
| 1910 |
12,000 |
53 |
248,343 |
| 1921 |
12,000 |
53 |
345,949 |
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Norton Mezvinsky, "The White Ribbon Reform, 1874-1920" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1959), 68.
Courtesy of Professor Norton Mezvinsky, Department of History, Central Connecticut
State University.
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