Justin Baker
Professor Craig Ferguson
U.S. History Since 1877
12 December 2018
How History Shaped The Modern United States
Elizabeth Stanton and Susan B. Anthony led the Women’s Rights Movement with the primary goal was of achieving the right to vote. The movement lasted from 1848 to 1920 and ended when the 19th Amendment was ratified and gave women the right to vote. During the movement, the government used “The Doctrine of Separate Spheres” to deny women the right to vote. It stated that men and women were different and worked under different spheres of influence; men were obligated to work, vote, and participate in the public sphere. Women were meant to be domestic, by staying at home taking care of the house, kids, and attending to their husbands needs. Because of these forced roles, women were viewed as more of a caretaker than an equal partner. By the end of the 19th century, The National Americans Women’s Suffrage Association successfully changed the legal meaning of marriage from a coverture to the equal partners meaning we have today. Now, men and women share roles in a marriage. Both work, take care of the family, domestic affairs, and vote. This change was a big success for the women’s movement because it meant women were no longer seen as property. After Stanton and Anthony pass away, Carrie Chapman Catt and Anna Shaw became the new leaders of the NAWSA. The new leaders used radical methods to convey their conservative message in the fight for suffrage. By holding rallies, protests, and demonstrations, they were able to push the movement nationwide through newspapers. The movement then gained traction through national support. Additionally, Catt and Shaw accepted the Doctrine of Separate Spheres and used it to argue that women should be able to vote for the same reason their opponents were arguing they should not. According to Catt and Shaw, women should be allowed to vote because women were different than men. If women could vote, they could help clean up the government, since the doctrine established that politics were dirty and immoral. However, the true turning point for the movement wasn’t until World War 1, when women proved they could operate in the male sphere, because the men were away at war. In 1920, the NAWSA achieved their goal of women’s suffrage through the passage of the 19th Amendment. Women now saw themselves as equal. Today, women are running companies and entering into politics. Although there are still inequalities between men and women, like the gender pay gap for doing the same job and women are being overlooked for positions deemed male only. Women who started The Settlement House Movement represented the first women who graduated college. These women bought buildings in cities to help the poor. They taught the poor how to read, write, and speak basic English to get them a job so they could provide for their families. Although these women had good intentions, they were seen as arrogant because they were telling these poor people how to live their life and they would just go back to their rich houses when they were done. They weren’t able to connect with the people they were trying to help. The Settlement House Movement laid the foundation for the Progressive Movement. Rapid unregulated industrialization led to the Progressive Movement. During this, government agencies like OSHA, which protects workers safety, and other worker protection laws we have today are made. The Environmental Protection Agency was also formed to protect against the pollution and dumping of waste from these factories. The progressives believed in the reformability of society and the perfectibility of mankind. Thinking that if society could be fixed through reform that people would reform themselves. During this movement there were two presidents who were progressives Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. Roosevelt pushed for progressive reforms and used what he called the “Square Deal” to add his own contributions to the movement. He had environmentalist concerns and wanted the government to regulate business and raw materials to grow the economy. Roosevelt also wanted to manage the use of natural resources with a sustained yield. Wilson, however, ran on “New Freedom” and had three areas of reform to help the economy. He wanted to reduce tariffs on imports for free trade with other countries. Another area Wilson reformed was the banking system with the Federal Reserve Act of 1917. This gave the government more control over banks and the Federal Reserve System had control over the economy and the people by setting the prime interest rate, which told the banks how much they could charge in interest. Wilson believed the government had a right to teach people moral behavior. This is shown by the 18th amendment that outlawed alcohol and caused people to find other ways to get alcohol like creating secret bars called speakeasies. There were four motivating factors that drove the progressive movement: democracy, social justice, progress, and security for the middle class. By creating a secret ballot, people could vote without being harassed into changing their vote and the passing of the 17th and 19th amendment lead to a better democracy. Trying to perfect mankind and clean up the environment created a social justice to try and keep people from participating in immoral acts. New technologies help move people toward perfection and create progress that affects all classes of people. The middle class became more active in the government and there was a minimal standard of living for the poor. Companies started providing benefits like higher pay and a 40-hour workweek before government had a chance to makes these a standard like they are today. Companies were using this welfare capitalism because the economy was booming and they could afford it, but once the economy started going downhill these benefits got taken away. The booming economy of the 20’s after WWI put an end to the Progressive Movement. In the 1920’s, people had more free time since they were working less thanks to the 40-hour workweek. New technologies also gave women more time out of the house and with their new sense of equality they became more promiscuous. The dresses became shorter and women started wearing makeup that used to only be seen on prostitutes. Women were more outgoing by smoking, drinking, gambling, and dancing out in public. Dances became more provocative instead of formal ballroom dancing like in the past. Today, dancing has changed significantly and has become more sexualized than before. The traditional way women used to dress has also changed. They no longer covered up and started wearing shorter dresses. Our modern nightlife was also first seen in the 1920’s due to advances in electricity people were able to stay out later and new entertainment kept people out longer. This social change was met with a cultural conflict between the urbanites and the traditional ruralists. The rural traditionalists felt this new lifestyle and new technologies were immoral. This becomes a religious conflict and is shown in the Scopes Trial that was fought over the teaching of evolution. Tennessee passed the Butler Act that outlawed the teaching of evolution, but the American Civil Liberties Union comes out and says they will protect any teacher who teaches it. John Scopes a teacher in Dayton, Tennessee, teaches about evolution and gets arrested. The ACLU sends Clarence Darrow a popular attorney to represent Scopes and Tennessee hires William Bryan an even more popular attorney, who was also a three-time nominee for president. Darrow knows he has to argue his point to the public more than to the jury because the jury is made up of rural traditionalist from Tennessee who is against the teaching of evolution. By winning the public opinion, Darrow shows that you can reconcile religion and science although Scopes is still convicted it is a big win in the public for the urbanites. This fight over the teaching of evolution still goes on in schools across rural America today. Abortion has also been another religious fight between traditionalists and urbanites and is seen as immoral no matter the circumstances. Modern entertainment also emerged during the 1920’s with new music, media, Hollywood, and modern sports. Athletes become sport cult heroes where they are entertainers, businessmen, and athletes. Although not all athletes are seen this way. For example, Babe Ruth vs. Ty Cobb in baseball. Both players are equally as good but Ruth is better known and liked because he was a good entertainer and just played the game. These new entertainments like the new music, Hollywood, and the media are all seen as immoral because the older generation feels that the youth is impressionable and these are sending the wrong message to them. This argument is still used today with new movies and video games that are released. Shooting games have become a hot topic with all the school shootings that have taken place and people are blaming them for making the youth violent. Dating also changed in the 1920’s. Cars made it easier for people to go places and kids didn’t have to be chaperoned anymore by parents. This started the modern form of dating we have today. Parents no longer are there for every date spent together and the couple can go anywhere the want. Mass consumerism also started in the 1920’s by companies mass producing goods thinking the more they produced the higher the demand would be. This causes companies to lose money because they are making more products than are being bought by the consumer. Credit also allowed people to buy new products and pay on them later. The traditionalists thought credit was immoral and believed in a thrift style of living where they worked and saved up money to buy what they needed with cash. Today, people buy everything on credit from cars and homes to everyday goods in department stores. This mass consumerism and excess in credit lending led to The Great Depression. The Great Depression was caused by three key structural flaws. Poor income distribution where the pay gap between rich and poor is the worst it’s ever been. This gap is even greater today between the top 1% and the middle and lower classes. The second flaw is poor corporate structure. The stock markets, corporations, and the banking system were all poorly regulated. The stock market boomed because everyone was buying stocks in companies that were new in hopes of getting rich quick. These same people caused the stock market to crash when they saw it fall and decided to sell all their stocks at once. This caused the government to create the Securities Exchange Commission to oversee the stock market. The SEC is still active today along with the Federal Deposits Insurance Commission the government also created that insured peoples money up to a quarter million dollars. The FDIC helped the government bail banks out in 2008 when they over leant in the housing market and almost went bankrupt. The final major flaw was our bad foreign trade policy. After World War I, the United States was the worlds largest creditor but the large tariffs on British and French goods meant they could not pay us back. President Hoover believed in a hands off approach when dealing with the depression. He felt it would create a society dependent on government assistance. Hoover went back on this though when he wanted to get re-elected and expanded the government’s role with the reconstruction refinance corporation. This gave money to businesses to rehire workers and then the money would trickle down to the workers. People did not like this because it gave money to the rich instead of the people who really needed it. This led to a group of veterans known as the “Bonus Marchers” to march to Washington to pressure congress into giving them their bonuses now instead of paid out over 20 years. Congress denied this and most of the marchers went home, but with nowhere to go the rest stayed in places called Hoovervilles. J. Edgar Hoover convinces President Hoover that these marchers were infiltrated by communists. The army gets sent in, uses tear gas and beat the marchers and a Bonus Marcher’s baby is killed. This ruins Hoover’s chances of being re-elected and instead Franklin D. Roosevelt gets elected. He created the modern Democratic Party we have today. He also appointed the first female cabinet member which paved the way for more women to enter politics. Roosevelt enacted the Wagoner Act that protected workers rights to unionize. FDR also created “The New Deal” initiative that expanded the government’s role to give money to the people. Under this New Deal the Public Works Administration was formed under Harold Ickes. This administration hires people to do public projects like building schools and roads. Ickes, however, thought that the government spending too much money to fast would lead to waste and corruption. This leads to the creation of the Works Progress Administration to over see the completion of the original projects. The WPA was led by Harry Hopkins who believed that a certain amount of waste and corruption was necessary to stimulate the economy. FDR wanted to use the WPA to put America and its people back to work. He also wanted to create an American Culture through art, writing, and sculptures. Although this didn’t end the depression, military spending during World War II did. The government still uses military people today to help stimulate the economy. After World War II The Civil Rights Movement really took off. Failure of racial reconstruction after the civil war led to the birth of The Civil Rights Movement. African American soldiers during World War II saw that other countries didn’t have the same racial biases that the U.S. had. The soldiers thought that since they were serving their country the country they were serving should serve them as well. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People saw a huge increase in membership in the south. The post war sentiment also changed when Harry Truman issued an executive order that forced the integration in all the armed forces. Baseball also integrated in 1947 when Jackie Robinson was brought into the major leagues he was the first African American in the major leagues. The south had enacted Jim Crow Laws that mandated racial segregation. These laws were targeted b the NAACP. In Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education, they argued that segregation was already illegal. It’s argued that African American kids are taught they are inferior to whites because they are segregated and that the kids want to be white. After Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson dies, a new Chief Justice is elected. Chief Justice Earl Warren convinces the Supreme Court to a unanimous decision in favor of integrating schools. Schools today still single out African American kids by forcing them to change their hair or the way they dress. Eisenhower said Warren set the south back 15 years and that integrating the schools should be up to the states. The next chapter of The Civil Rights movement is started when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. She became the perfect symbol for The Civil Rights Movement. She is the Secretary of the local NAACP chapter. This led to Martin Luther King, Jr. becoming the leader of the movement and taking a nonviolent approach so they wouldn’t come off as threatening. Protests were televised and showed how badly police and other people treated them. After seeing this, northerners side with the protestors due to the brutality of how they were treated. These protests inspired four college students in Greensboro, North Carolina, to get involved. In what is known as the Greensboro Movement, four students organize a sit in at a segregated drug store lunch counter. As the week goes on, more people join the sit in and protest outside the drug store as well. This causes the drug store to finally integrate. Martin Luther King, Jr. and approximately a quarter million people march on Washington, where King gives his famous “ I Have A Dream Speech.” These marchers go to urge Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964. John F. Kennedy endorses the bill, but is filibustered by southern segregationists in Congress. After Kennedy’s assassination, Lyndon B. Johnson says we need to pass this bill for Kennedy. The Civil Rights Act outlawed segregation in all public accommodations. It also created the Equal Opportunity Committee that outlawed discrimination in the workplace based on age, race, gender, and religion.