Anna Howard Shaw and the Fight For Women’s Rights

As you read, consider the following questions:

1. How did women protest at Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration?

2. What were the three strategies mentioned in this article that suffragists used to try to achieve women’s suffrage?

3. Who was Anna Howard Shaw? Why was she a remarkable person, especially for the time in which she lived?

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On the day before Woodrow Wilson took office, on March 3, 1913, more than 8,000 women marched down Pennsylvania Avenue, carrying banners, demanding the right to vote.  As the women started marching, they were met with jeers and hit by eggs.  As the march progressed, onlookers attempted to break up the march, by throwing rocks, pushing the suffragists, and yanking them off the streets.  Police witnessing the attack refused to intercede, and order was not restored until the Secretary of War, acting under presidential order, called out federal troops from the U.S. Army garrison in Ft. Myers, Virginia.

The violence, which occurred under the eye of the national press, who had gathered for Wilson’s inaugural, made front-page news.  The story remained on the front pages while the government opened a federal investigation into the attacks, which subsequently led to the dismissal of Washington D.C.’s Chief of Police.

The attack and the subsequent investigation not only created sympathy for the women, but also provoked a national debate.

Building on public sympathy, suffragist leaders organized another march one month later, and thousands of women, representing every congressional district in the nation, marched to the Capitol, demanding the establishment of a congressional subcommittee to consider drafting a women’s suffrage amendment.  In the face of public pressure, Congress agreed to form a subcommittee.  The subcommittee, however, quickly decided against the introduction of a women’s suffrage amendment.

The decision came as no surprise.  From 1868 to 1920, suffragist leaders petitioned 19 successive Congresses to introduce a national suffrage amendment, and each time they had failed.  During the same period, they led 527 separate campaigns to get individual states to add a women’s suffrage referendum to the ballot, 277 separate campaigns to get state and national parties to adopt women’s suffrage resolutions to their platforms, and 56 separate campaigns to get voters to approve women’s suffrage in states that the referendum was allowed.

Despite all this activity, women lost nearly every campaign.

By 1914, only 7 states out of 48 allowed women to vote.

Between 1900 and 1910, the National American Woman’s Suffrage Association, which informed its members on the results of each campaign, recorded defeats, on average, once every 27 days.

After more than 50 years of public speeches on this one issue, suffragist leaders faced some difficult challenges: How could they create successful arguments when most male voters had already heard, and rejected, nearly everything that could be said on the issue?  What could they say to appeal to voters and politicians of one party that would also appeal to voters and politicians of another?  How could they keep their arguments fresh, and attract the attention of the press?  And perhaps most difficult, what could be said to boost the morale of rank-and-file suffragists who had lost nearly every battle they had ever waged?

Suffrage supporters found a much-needed answer in a woman who had received an M.D. degree but who did not practice medicine, a woman who had become the first ordained female Methodist minister, but did not have a permanent congregation — a woman named Anna Howard Shaw.

In 1885, after hearing Shaw preach, Susan B. Anthony hired her on the spot to be a full-time, salaried public-speaker.  Shaw signed up for a year, traveling across the nation, speaking at local suffrage rallies and challenging opponents to debate.  Shaw was so popular, that she remained on the speaking circuit for 35 more years.

On the speaking trail, Shaw gave more than more than 600 talks a year, sometimes speaking as many as eight times a day.  In 1915, to support ballot initiatives in New York, Shaw made 204 speeches in that state alone.  At the time, the indefatigable Shaw was nearly 70 years old.

Shaw never used notes.  She didn’t need to: she always spoke on the same topic.  To keep her speeches fresh, Shaw would interlace her argument with anecdotes and humor.  One of her favorite tactics was to paraphrase an opponent’s position before he got a chance to speak, and, then by pointing out contrary positions made by other opponents of suffrage, Shaw left her foe with nothing to say.

Suffragists rushed to hear her.  Few men dared to debate her.  Suffragist leader Carrie Chapman Catt called Shaw, “the greatest orator among women the world has ever known.”

Shaw delivered her most famous address, often referred to as the “The Fundamental Principles of a Republic,” many times during 1915 referendum campaigns in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania.  The address that follows was the version she gave before the New York State Assembly just before members prepared to vote on whether or not to add a suffrage referendum to the state ballot.

Anna Howard Shaw calls on male lawmakers to pass women’s suffrage, before the N.Y. State Legislature, June 1915. Within two years, New York became the eighth state to grant women the right to vote.  Two years later, President Wilson agreed to support a national women’s suffrage amendment to the Constitution, and, in 1920 the amendment was ratified and became law.

Shaw died a year before ratification.  Newspapers around the country ran large obituaries marking the passing of the suffragist leader.  In Philadelphia, The North American wrote: “Dr. Shaw was without equal as an orator among women…  She is generally conceded as the greatest woman speaker that has ever lived.  Some even believe her to have been without peer in either sex among orators of her day.”

MC practice for Test 27-28 on Monday

Because I am being kind…

1. On the question of whether American laws applied to overseas territory acquired in the Spanish-American War, the Supreme Court held that

A. federal but not state laws applied.

B. only the President’s rulings counted and Congress had no voice in the matter.

C. American laws did not necessarily apply; it was up to Congress to apply constitutional protections on a territory by territory basis.

D. only tariff laws could be enforced.

E. only the Bill of Rights applied.

______________________

2. America’s initial Open Door policy was an argument to promote

A. free trade in China.

B. equal spheres of influence in China.

C. military protection for the Chinese emperor.

D. exclusive trade concessions for the US in Shanghai,

E. the principle of self-determination.

_______________________

3. Teddy Roosevelt became the first US president awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for

A. his work as the assistant secretary of the navy.

B. negotiating the Treaty of Portsmouth ending the Russo Japanese War of 1904.

C. his treatment of the Filipino people.

D. his demand for fair treatment for Japanese laborers living in the US.

E. his principled status as a conscientious objector during the Spanish-American War.

______________________

4. The real heart of the progressive movement was the effort by reformers to

A. preserve world peace.

B. ensure the Jeffersonian style of government.

C. use the government as an agent for social welfare.

D. get the government off the backs of the people.

E. remove power from state and local governments.

______________________

5. The real purpose of Teddy Roosevelt’s assault on trusts was to

A. fragment big business.

B. establish himself as a bigger trustbuster than Taft.

C. halt the trend toward combination and integration in business.

D. prove that government, not big business, ruled the country.

E. demonstrate his complete mastery over the country.

______________________

6. All of the following were causes of US imperialism EXCEPT:

A. economic competition among industrialized nations.

B. a search for raw materials.

C. political and military competition, including the creation of a strong navy.

D. a belief in the racial and cultural superiority of American (WASP) people.

E. requests for American assistance from native peoples.

______________________

7. The acquisition of the Philippines resulted in the United States

A. gaining a weaker defensive position in the Far East.

B. openly challenging the British in imperialist competition.

C. gaining a new war to fight against nationalist Filipinos.

D. being hailed as saviors by the Filipino people.

E. gaining valuable spice sources.

______________________

8. The US gained a perpetual lease on the Panama Canal Zone in the

A. Hay- Bunau- Varilla Treaty.

B. Hay-Pauncefote Treaty.

C. Clayton-Bulwer Treaty.

D. Gentlemen’s Agreement.

E. Teller Amendment.

______________________

9. Female progressives justified their reformist political activities on the basis of

A. their actions being an extension of women’s traditional roles as wives and mothers.

B. America’s need to catch up with more progressive European nations.

C. women’s inherent rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

D. the harsh treatment of women by their employers.

E. the need to assert female power against male oppression.

______________________

10. In the United States, prohibition

A. began with passage of the 18^th Amendment.

B. was already in place in most urban areas before being added to the Constitution.

C. was considered to be a proper issue for men only to discuss, since women were less likely to be drinkers.

D. was considered to be the same thing as temperance.

E. laws were first passed in the state of Maine in 1851.

______________________

11. In the 1908 landmark case of Muller v. Oregon the Supreme Court ruled that

A. sanitation codes were legal.

B. workingmen’s compensation was legal.

C. antiliquor laws were constitutional.

D. laws protecting female workers were legal.

E. antitrust laws were constitutional.

______________________

12. The public outcry  after the horrible Triangle Shirtwaist fire led many states to pass

A. mandatory fire escape plans for all businesses employing more than ten people.

B. safety regulations and workmen’s compensation laws for job injuries.

C. restrictions on female employment in the garment industry.

D. zoning regulations limiting where factories could be located.

E. laws guaranteeing unions the right to raise safety questions.

______________________

13. The Elkins and Hepburn Acts dealt with the subject of

A. regulation of the railroad industry.

B. the purity of food and drugs.

C. conservation of natural resources.

D. women’s working conditions.

E. regulation of municipal utilities.

______________________

14. The idea of “multiple use resource management” included all of the following EXCEPT:

A. recreation.

B. damming of rivers.

C. sustained yield logging.

D. summer stock grazing.

E. watershed protection.

______________________

15. The Supreme Court’s “rule of reason” as applied in the case of Standard Oil v. US in 1911 held that

A. it was immensely reasonable to assume that all trusts harmed the public welfare.

B. the amount of profits generated by Standard Oil was unreasonable, and therefore the company should be dissolved.

C.  only trusts that unreasonably restrained trade were subject to penalty under the Sherman Act.

D. any sort of limitations placed on corporations was unreasonable.

E. corporations reasonably behaved as persons under the law, and therefore were protected under the 14^th Amendment.

______________________

16. Theodore Roosevelt defended his building of the Panama Canal by claiming that

A. other nations in Latin America had requested his help.

B. the canal would strengthen the American relationship with Latin American nations.

C. he had received a “mandate from civilization.”

D. Britain would have built the canal had the US not taken the initiative.

E. it would enhance the economic development of the West Coast.

______________________

17. The Roosevelt Corollary added a new provision to the Monroe Doctrine that was specifically designed to

A. enable the US to rule Puerto Rico and the Canal Zone.

B. stop European colonization in the Western Hemisphere.

C. restore cordial relations  between the US and Latin Americans countries.

D. establish a friendly partnership with Britain so that together the two countries countries could police Latin American affairs.

E. justify US intervention in the affairs of Latin American countries.

______________________

18. The “Gentlemen’s Agreement” that Teddy Roosevelt worked out with the Japanese in 1907-1908

A. concluded the Russo-Japanese War.

B. helped him win the 1908 Nobel Peace Prize.

C. restricted Japanese immigration to upper class Japanese males.

D. ended racist “yellow journalism” being practiced in the US.

E. caused Japan to halt the flow of laborers to the US in exchange for the repeal of a racist San Francisco school board decree.

______________________

19. In the Root-Takahara agreement of 1908,

A. the US and Japan agreed to respect each other’s territorial holdings in the Pacific.

B. the Japanese government agreed to limit Japanese laborers entering the US.

C. the US agreed to accept a Japanese sphere of influence in China.

D. the US recognized Japanese control of Korea.

E. Japan  accepted US control of the Philippines in exchange for Japanese control of Manchuria.

______________________

20. When the US captured the Philippines from Spain,

A. Filipinos were granted US citizenship.

B. they did so without Filipino assistance.

C. Spain immediately asked for an end to the war.

D. Hawai’i was annexed as a key territory in the Pacific.

E. America granted the Philippines their independence.

Chapter 30 outline format

Due Tuesday, Feb. 1. Make sure you include dates, names, and significance.

I. How was the American economy and society (the Home Front) affected by the Great War?
A. The Role of Idealism—what is Wilson’s dream?
B. The Fourteen Points overview
–1. What are the three main points of the 14 Points? (Look them all up)
C. The role of advertising and propaganda
D. Free Speech in Wartime
E. How do we put the economy on a war footing?
–1. Council of National Defense
–2. Shipbuilding, especially
–3. National War Labor Board
—-a. Effect of “Work or fight”
–4. Response of unions to the war effort
–5. Why were there strikes?
F. Effect of the war effort on minority employment and population distribution
–1. Backlash
G. Effect of war effort on women
H. Herbert Hoover and the Food Administration
I. How do we pay for it all?
J. Racial and ethnic tensions

II. What was the general military history of the War?
A. How It All Began—and whose fault was it?
B. Instituting the draft
C. Training
D. Major Battles in which American troops participate
E. Effect of Russian withdrawal
F. Pershing and Sergeant York
G. German surrender

III. How did Wilson set out to “Win the Peace?” What were his idealistic goals, and were they achieved?
A. Wilson goes to Paris
B. Paris Conference
C. League of Nations—why?
1. Article X—what was it and why the controversy?
D. Details of the Treaty of Versailles
E. Henry Cabot Lodge- what role does he play and why?
–1. Lodge Reservations
F.  Wilson’s collapse
G. What happens to the Treaty in the US—and why is this ironic?
H. Effects of the Treaty of Versailles
–1. in Europe
–2. in US politics
–3. in international relations

Debaters: Make-up session for Ms. K

For those of you who missed the presentation with Ms. K Friday, Jan. 28 because you were on a debate trip, Mr. Pierce has agreed that you can see Ms. K during his class 7th period, and Ms. K has an available opening for you on February 7. So, Feb 7, 7th hour. Be there!

Further adjustments thanks to the Snowpocalypse

So, Friday, some of you are going on the debate field trip, but most of you will be seeing Ms. K and listening AVIDLY as she explains what you really need to know about college. So just to make sure you get this:

1. We will still have a test on Monday, but it will be ONLY over chapters 27 and 28– Imperialism and Progressivism under Roosevelt and Taft (up to the election of 1912 and why it turned out as it did). Since I haven’t really gotten to cover chapter 29 in class, that will have to be moved to the next test.

2. Make sure you are checking the blog frequently. There are new posts below this one.

3. Make sure you have read “Tweed Days in St. Louis.” Another copy of this reading is below here.

The “Square Deal,” in TR’s own words

Theodore Roosevelt tells the secrets of “a Square Deal” to farmers at the New York State Agricultural Association, Syracuse, NY, September 7, 1903.

In speaking on Labor Day at the annual fair of the New York State Agricultural Association, it is natural to keep especially in mind the two bodies who compose the majority of our people and upon whose welfare depends the welfare of the entire State.  If circumstances are such that thrift, energy, industry, and forethought enable the farmer, the tiller of the soil, on the one hand, and the wage-worker on the other, to keep themselves, their wives, and their children in reasonable comfort, then the State is well off, and we can be assured that the other classes in the community will likewise prosper.  On the other hand, if there is in the long run a lack of prosperity among the two classes named, then all other prosperity is sure to be more seeming than real.

It has been our profound good fortune as a nation that hitherto, disregarding exceptional periods of depression and the normal and inevitable fluctuations, there has been on the whole from the beginning of our government to the present day a progressive betterment alike in the condition of the tiller of the soil and in the condition of the man who, by his manual skill and labor, supports himself and his family, and endeavors to bring up his children so that they may be at least as well off as, and, if possible, better off than, he himself has been.  There are, of course, exceptions, but as a whole the standard of living among the farmers of our country has risen from generation to generation, and the wealth represented on the farms has steadily increased, while the wages of labor have likewise risen, both as regards the actual money paid and as regards the purchasing power which that money represents.

Side by side with this increase in the prosperity of the wage-worker and the tiller of the soil has gone on a great increase in prosperity among the business men and among certain classes of professional men; and the prosperity of these men has been partly the cause and partly the consequence of the prosperity of farmer and wage-worker.  It cannot be too often repeated that in this country, in the long run, we all of us tend to go up or go down together. If the average of well-being is high, it means that the average wage-worker, the average farmer, and the average business man are all alike well-off.  If the average shrinks, there is not one of these classes which will not feel the shrinkage.  Of course, there are always some men who are not affected by good times, just as there are some men who are not affected by bad times.  But speaking broadly, it is true that if prosperity comes, all of us tend to share more or less therein, and that if adversity comes each of us, to a greater or less extent, feels the tension.

Unfortunately, in this world the innocent frequently find themselves obliged to pay some of the penalty for the misdeeds of the guilty; and so if hard times come, whether they be due to our own fault or to our misfortune, whether they be due to some burst of speculative frenzy that has caused a portion of the business world to lose its head–a loss which no legislation can possibly supply–or whether they be due to any lack of wisdom in a portion of the world of labor–in each case, the trouble once started is felt more or less in every walk of life.

It is all-essential to the continuance of our healthy national life that we should recognize this community of interest among our people.  The welfare of each of us is dependent fundamentally upon the welfare of all of us, and therefore in public life that man is the best representative of each of us who seeks to do good to each by doing good to all; in other words, whose endeavor it is not to represent any special class and promote merely that class’s selfish interests, but to represent all true and honest men of all sections and all classes and to work for their interests by working for our common country.

We can keep our government on a sane and healthy basis, we can make and keep our social system what it should be, only on condition of judging each man, not as a member of a class, but on his worth as a man.  It is an infamous thing in our American life, and fundamentally treacherous to our institutions, to apply to any man any test save that of his personal worth, or to draw between two sets of men any distinction save the distinction of conduct, the distinction that marks off those who do well and wisely from those who do ill and foolishly.  There are good citizens and bad citizens in every class as in every locality, and the attitude of decent people toward great public and social questions should be determined, not by the accidental questions of employment or locality, but by those deep-set principles which represent the innermost souls of men.

The failure in public and in private life thus to treat each man on his own merits, the recognition of this government as being either for the poor as such or for the rich as such, would prove fatal to our Republic, as such failure and such recognition have always proved fatal in the past to other republics.  A healthy republican government must rest upon individuals, not upon classes or sections.  As soon as it becomes government by a class or by a section, it departs from the old American ideal.

Many qualities are needed by a people which would preserve the power of self- government in fact as well as in name.  Among these qualities are forethought, shrewdness, self-restraint, the courage which refuses to abandon one’s own rights, and the disinterested and kindly good sense which enables one to do justice to the rights of others.  Lack of strength and lack of courage and unfit men for self-government on the one hand; and on the other, brutal arrogance, envy — in short, any manifestation of the spirit of selfish disregard, whether of one’s own duties or of the rights of others, are equally fatal.

In the history of mankind many republics have risen, have flourished for a less or greater time, and then have fallen because their citizens lost the power of governing themselves and thereby of governing their state; and in no way has this loss of power been so often and so clearly shown as in the tendency to turn the government into a government primarily for the benefit of one class instead of a government for the benefit of the people as a whole. Again and again in the republics of ancient Greece, in those of medieval Italy and medieval Flanders, this tendency was shown, and wherever the tendency became a habit it invariably and inevitably proved fatal to the state.  In the final result, it mattered not one whit whether the movement was in favor of one class or of another.

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There is no room in our healthy American life for the mere idler.

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The outcome was equally fatal, whether the country fell into the hands of a wealthy oligarchy which exploited the poor or whether it fell under the domination of a turbulent mob which plundered the rich.  In both cases there resulted violent alternations between tyranny and disorder, and a final complete loss of liberty to all citizens–destruction in the end overtaking the class which had for the moment been victorious as well as that which had momentarily been defeated.  The death-knell of the Republic had rung as soon as the active power became lodged in the hands of those who sought, not to do justice to all citizens, rich and poor alike, but to stand for one special class and for its interests as opposed to the interests of others.

The reason why our future is assured lies in the fact that our people are genuinely skilled in and fitted for self-government and therefore will spurn the leadership of those who seek to excite this ferocious and foolish class antagonism.  The average American knows not only that he himself intends to do what is right, but that his average fellow countryman has the same intention and the same power to make his intention effective.  He knows, whether he be business man, professional man, farmer, mechanic, employer, or wage-worker, that the welfare of each of these men is bound up with the welfare of all the others; that each is neighbor to the other, is actuated by the same hopes and fears, has fundamentally the same ideals, and that all alike have much the same virtues and the same faults.  Our average fellow citizen is a sane and healthy man who believes in decency and has a wholesome mind.  He therefore feels an equal scorn alike for the man of wealth guilty of the mean and base spirit of arrogance toward those who are less well off, and for the man of small means who in his turn either feels, or seeks to excite in others the feeling of mean and base envy for those who are better off.  The two feelings, envy and arrogance, are but opposite sides of the same shield, but different developments of the same spirit…

The line of cleavage between good citizenship and bad citizenship separates the rich man who does well from the rich man who does ill, the poor man of good conduct from the poor man of bad conduct.  This line of cleavage lies at right angles to any such arbitrary line of division as that separating one class from another, one locality from another, or men with a certain degree of property from those of a less degree of property.

The good citizen is the man who, whatever his wealth or his poverty, strives manfully to do his duty to himself, to his family, to his neighbor, to the States; who is incapable of the baseness which manifests itself either in arrogance or in envy, but who while demanding justice for himself is no less scrupulous to do justice to others.  It is because the average American citizen, rich or poor, is of just this type that we have cause for our profound faith in the future of the Republic.

There is no worse enemy of the wage-worker than the man who condones mob violence in any shape or who preaches class hatred; and surely the slightest acquaintance with our industrial history should teach even the most short-sighted that the times of most suffering for our people as a whole, the times when business is stagnant, and capital suffers from shrinkage and gets no return from its investments, are exactly the times of hardship, and want, and grim disaster among the poor.  If all the existing instrumentalities of wealth could be abolished, the first and severest suffering would come among those of us who are least well-off at present.  The wage-worker is well off only when the rest of the country is well-off; and he can best contribute to this general well-being by showing sanity and a firm purpose to do justice to others.

In his turn, the capitalist who is really a conservative, the man who has forethought as well as patriotism, should heartily welcome every effort, legislative or otherwise, which has for its object to secure fair dealing by capital, corporate or individual, toward the public and toward the employee.  Such laws as the franchise-tax law in this State, which the Court of Appeals recently unanimously decided constitutional–such a law as that passed in Congress last year for the purpose of establishing a Department of Commerce and Labor, under which there should be a bureau to oversee and secure publicity from the great corporations which do an interstate business–such a law as that passed at the same time for the regulation of the great highways of commerce so as to keep these roads clear on fair terms to all producers in getting their goods to market–these laws are in the interest not merely of the people as a whole, but of the propertied classes.  For in no way is the stability of property better assured than by making it patent to our people that property bears its proper share of the burdens of the State; that property is handled not only in the interest of the owner, but in the interest of the whole community.

Among ourselves we differ in many qualities of body, head, and heart; we are unequally developed, mentally as well as physically.  But each of us has the right to ask that he shall be protected from wrong-doing as he does his work and carries his burden through life.  No man needs sympathy because he has to work, because he has a burden to carry.  Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing; and this is a prize open to every man, for there can be no better worth doing than that done to keep in health and comfort and with reasonable advantages those immediately dependent upon the husband, the father, or the son. There is no room in our healthy American life for the mere idler, for the man or the woman whose object it is throughout life to shirk the duties which life ought to bring.  Life can mean nothing worth meaning, unless its prime aim is the doing of duty, the achievement of results worth achieving.  A recent writer has finely said: ; “After all, the saddest thing that can happen to a man is to carry no burdens.  To be bent under too great a load is bad; to be crushed by it is lamentable; but even in that there are possibilities that are glorious.  But to carry no load at all–there is nothing in that.  No one seems to arrive at any goal really worth reaching in this world who does not come to it heavy laden.”

Surely from our own experience each one of us knows that this is true.  From the greatest to the smallest, happiness and usefulness are largely found in the same soul, and the joy of life is won in its deepest and truest sense only by those who have not shirked life’s burdens.  The men whom we most delight to honor in all this land are those who, in the iron years from ’61 to ’65, bore on their shoulders the burden of saving the Union.  They did not choose the easy task.  They did not shirk the difficult duty.  Deliberately and of their own free will they strove for an ideal, upward and onward across the stony slopes of greatness.  They did the hardest work that was then to be done; they bore the heaviest burden that any generation of Americans ever had to bear; and because they did this they have won such proud joy as it has fallen to the lot of no other men to win, and have written their names forevermore on the golden honor-roll of the nation.  As it is with the soldier, so it is with the civilian.  To win success in the business world, to become a first-class mechanic, a successful farmer, an able lawyer or doctor, means that the man has devoted his best energy and power through long years to the achievement of his ends.  So it is in the life of the family, upon which in the last analysis the whole welfare of the nation rests.  The man or woman who, as bread-winner and home-maker, or as wife and mother, has done all that he or she can do, patiently and uncomplainingly, is to be honored; and is to be envied by all those who have never had the good fortune to feel the need and duty of doing such work.  The woman who has borne, and who has reared as they should be reared, a family of children, has in the most emphatic manner deserved well of the Republic.  Her burden has been heavy, and she has been able to bear it worthily only by the possession of resolution, of good sense, of conscience, and of unselfishness.  But if she has borne it well, then to her shall come the supreme blessing, for in the words of the oldest and greatest of books, “Her children shall rise up and call her blessed;” and among the benefactors of the land, her place must be with those who have done the best and the hardest work, whether as lawgivers or as soldiers, whether in public or private life.

This is not a soft and easy creed to preach.  It is a creed willingly learned only by men and women who, together with the softer virtues, possess also the stronger; who can do, and dare, and die at need, but who while life lasts will never flinch from their allotted task.  You farmers, and wage-workers, and business men of this great State, of this mighty and wonderful nation, are gathered together today, proud of your State and still prouder of your nation, because your forefathers and predecessors have lived up to just this creed.  You have received from their hands a great inheritance, and you will leave an even greater inheritance to your children, and your children’s children, provided only that you practice alike in your private and your public lives the strong virtues that have given us as a people greatness in the past.  It is not enough to be well-meaning and kindly, but weak; neither is it enough to be strong, unless morality and decency go hand in hand with strength.  We must possess the qualities which make us do our duty in our homes and among our neighbors, and in addition we must possess the qualities which are indispensable to the make-up of every great and masterful nation–the qualities of courage and hardihood, of individual initiative and yet of power to combine for a common end, and above all, the resolute determination to permit no man and no set of men to sunder us one from the other by lines of caste or creed or section.  We must act upon the motto of all for each and each for all.  There must be ever present in our minds the fundamental truth that in a republic such as ours the only safety is to stand neither for nor against any man because he is rich or because he is poor, because he is engaged in one occupation or another, because he works with his brains or because he works with his hands.  We must treat each man on his worth and merits as a man.  We must see that each is given a square deal, because he is entitled to no more and should receive no less.

Finally, we must keep ever in mind that a republic such as ours can exist only by virtue of the orderly liberty which comes through the equal domination of the law over all men alike, and through its administration in such resolute and fearless fashion as shall teach all that no man is above it and no man below it.

Florence Kelley on Child Labor

Florence Kelley Speaks Out on Child Labor and Woman Suffrage, Philadelphia, PA, July 22, 1905.

Consider these questions as you read:

1. What are Kelley’s criticisms regarding child labor?

2. What connection does she make about labor laws and the right of women’s suffrage?

3. Think: Why would “no labor organization in this country ever [fail] to respond to an appeal for help in the freeing of children [from labor]?

_______________________________________________

We have, in this country, two million children under the age of sixteen years who are earning their bread.  They vary in age from six and seven years (in the cotton mills of Georgia) and eight, nine and ten years (in the coal-breakers of Pennsylvania), to fourteen, fifteen and sixteen years in more enlightened states.

No other portion of the wage earning class increased so rapidly from decade to decade as the young girls from fourteen to twenty years.  Men increase, women increase, youth increase, boys increase in the ranks of the breadwinners; but no contingent so doubles from census period to census period (both by percent and by count of heads), as does the contingent of girls between twelve and twenty years of age.  They are in commerce, in offices, in manufacturing.

Tonight while we sleep, several thousand little girls will be working in textile mills, all the night through, in the deafening noise of the spindles and the looms spinning and weaving cotton and wool, silks and ribbons for us to buy.

In Alabama the law provides that a child under sixteen years of age shall not work in a cotton mill at night longer than eight hours, and Alabama does better in this respect than any other southern state.  North and South Carolina and Georgia place no restriction upon the work of children at night; and while we sleep little white girls will be working tonight in the mills in those states, working eleven hours at night.

In Georgia there is no restriction whatever! A girl of six or seven years, just tall enough to reach the bobbins, may work eleven hours by day or by night.  And they will do so tonight, while we sleep.

Nor is it only in the South that these things occur.  Alabama does better than New Jersey.  For Alabama limits the children’s work at night to eight hours, while New Jersey permits it all night long.  Last year New Jersey took a long backward step.  A good law was repealed which had required women and [children] to stop work at six in the evening and at noon on Friday.  Now, therefore, in New Jersey, boys and girls, after their 14th birthday, enjoy the pitiful privilege of working all night long.

In Pennsylvania, until last May it was lawful for children, 13 years of age, to work twelve hours at night.  A little girl, on her thirteenth birthday, could start away from her home at half past five in the afternoon, carrying her pail of midnight luncheon as happier people carry their midday luncheon, and could work in the mill from six at night until six in the morning, without violating any law of the Commonwealth.

If the mothers and the teachers in Georgia could vote, would the Georgia Legislature have refused at every session for the last three years to stop the work in the mills of children under twelve years of age?

Would the New Jersey Legislature have passed that shameful repeal bill enabling girls of fourteen years to work all night, if the mothers in New Jersey were enfranchised? Until the mothers in the great industrial states are enfranchised, we shall none of us be able to free our consciences from participation in this great evil.  No one in this room tonight can feel free from such participation.  The children make our shoes in the shoe factories; they knit our stockings, our knitted underwear in the knitting factories.  They spin and weave our cotton underwear in the cotton mills.  Children braid straw for our hats, they spin and weave the silk and velvet wherewith we trim our hats.  They stamp buckles and metal ornaments of all kinds, as well as pins and hat-pins.  Under the sweating system, tiny children make artificial flowers and neckwear for us to buy.  They carry bundles of garments from the factories to the tenements, little beasts of burden, robbed of school life that they may work for us.

We do not wish this.  We prefer to have our work done by men and women.  But we are almost powerless.  Not wholly powerless, however, are citizens who enjoy the right of petition.  For myself, I shall use this power in every possible way until the right to the ballot is granted, and then I shall continue to use both.

What can we do to free our consciences? There is one line of action by which we can do much.  We can enlist the workingmen on behalf of our enfranchisement just in proportion as we strive with them to free the children.  No labor organization in this country ever fails to respond to an appeal for help in the freeing of the children.

For the sake of the children, for the Republic in which these children will vote after we are dead, and for the sake of our cause, we should enlist the workingmen voters, with us, in this task of freeing the children from toil!

WEB DuBois addresses the Niagara Movement

Go to http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_events_niagara.html to read a good synopsis of the Niagara Movement. This group led to the formation of the NAACP in 1910.

W.E.B. DuBois addresses the second annual meeting of the Niagara Conference, Harper’s Ferry, WV, August 16, 1906.

The men of the Niagara Movement coming from the toil of the year’s hard work and pausing a moment from the earning of their daily bread turn toward the nation and again ask again, in the name of ten million, the privilege of a hearing.

In the past year the work of the Negro-hater has flourished in the land.  Step by step the defenders of the rights of American citizens have retreated.  The work of stealing the black man’s ballot has progressed and the fifty and more representatives of stolen votes still sit in the nation’s capital.  Discrimination in travel and public accommodation has so spread that some of our weaker brethren are actually afraid to thunder against color discrimination as such and are simply whispering for ordinary decencies.  Against this the Niagara Movement eternally protests.  We will not be satisfied to take one jot or tittle less than our full manhood rights!

We claim for ourselves every single right that belongs to a freeborn American, political, civil and social; and until we get these rights we will never cease to protest and assail the ears of America! The battle we wage is not for ourselves alone but for all true Americans.  It is a fight for ideals, lest this, our common fatherland, false to its founding, become in truth, the land of the thief and the home of the slave, a byword and a hissing among the nations for its sounding pretensions and pitiful accomplishments.

Never before in the modern age has a great and civilized folk threatened to adopt so cowardly a creed in the treatment of its fellow citizens born and bred on it soil.  Stripped of verbiage and subterfuge and in its naked nastiness, the new American creed says: “Fear to let black men even try to rise lest they become the equals of the white.” And this is the land that professes to follow Jesus Christ! The blasphemy of such a course is only matched by its cowardice.

In detail, our demands are clear and unequivocal.  First, we would vote; with the right to vote goes everything: freedom, manhood, the honor of your wives, the chastity of your daughters, the right to work, and the chance to rise, and let no man listen to those who deny this.

We want full manhood suffrage, and we want it now, henceforth and forever!

Second.  We want discrimination in public accommodation to cease.  Separation in railway and street cars, based simply on race and color, is un-American, undemocratic, and silly.

Third.  We claim the right of freemen to walk, talk, and be with them that wish to be with us.  No man has a right to choose another man’s friends, and to attempt to do so is an impudent interference with the most fundamental human privilege.

_______________

We want full manhood

suffrage, and we want it

now, henceforth and forever!

_______________

Fourth.  We want the laws enforced against rich as well as poor; against capitalist as well as laborer; against white as well as black.  We are not more lawless than the white race: We are more often arrested, convicted and mobbed.  We want Congress to take charge of Congressional elections.  We want the Fourteenth Amendment carried out to the letter and every state disfranchised in Congress which attempts to disfranchise its rightful voters.  We want the Fifteenth Amendment enforced and no state allowed to base its franchise simply on color.

The failure of the Republican Party in Congress at the session just closed to redeem its pledge…to suffrage conditions in the South seems a plain, deliberate, and premeditated breach of promise, and stamps that Party as guilty of obtaining votes under false pretense.

Fifth.  We want our children educated.  The school system in the country districts of the South is a disgrace, and in few towns and cities are the Negro schools what they ought to be.  We want the national government to step in and wipe out illiteracy in the South.  Either the United States will destroy ignorance, or ignorance will destroy the United States.

And when we call for education we mean real education.  We believe in work.  We ourselves are workers, but work is not necessarily education.  Education is the development of power and ideal.  We want our children trained as intelligent human beings should be, and we will fight for all time against any proposal to educate black boys and girls simply as servants and underlings, or simply for the use of other people.  They have a right to know, to think, to aspire.

These are some of the chief things which we want.  How shall we get them? By voting where we may vote, by persistent, unceasing agitation, by hammering at the truth, by sacrifice and work.

We do not believe in violence, neither in the despised violence of the raid nor the lauded violence of the soldier, nor the barbarous of the mob, but we do believe in John Brown, in that incarnate spirit of justice, that hatred of a lie, that willingness to sacrifice money, reputation, and life itself on the altar of right.  And here on the scene of John Brown’s martyrdom, we reconsecrate ourselves, our honor, our property to the final emancipation of the race which John Brown died to make free.

Our enemies, triumphant for the present, are fighting the stars in their courses.  Justice and humanity must prevail.  We live to tell these dark brothers of ours–scattered in counsel, wavering, and weak–that no bribe of money or notoriety, no promise of wealth or fame, is worth the surrender of a people’s manhood or the loss of a man’s self-respect.  We refuse to surrender the leadership of this race to cowards and trucklers.  We are men; we will be treated as men.  On this rock we have planted our banners.  We

will never give up, though the trump of doom finds us still fighting.

And we shall win! The past promised it.  The present foretells it.  Thank God for John Brown.  Thank God for Garrison and Douglass, Sumner and Phillips, Nat Turner and Robert Gould Shaw, and all the hallowed dead who died for freedom.  Thank God for all those today, few though their voices be, who have not forgotten the divine brotherhood of all men, white and black, rich and poor, fortunate and unfortunate.

We appeal to the young men and women of this nation, to those whose nostrils are not yet befouled by greed and snobbery and racial narrowness: Stand up for the right, prove yourselves worthy of your heritage and, whether born North or South, dare to treat men as men. Cannot the nation that has absorbed ten-million foreigners into its political life without catastrophe absorb ten-million Negro Americans into that same political life at less cost than their unjust and illegal exclusion will involve?

Courage, brothers! The battle for humanity is not lost or losing.  All across the skies sit signs of promise! [DuBois points skyward.] The Slav is rising in his might, the yellow millions are tasting liberty, the black Africans are writhing toward the light, and everywhere the laborer, with ballot in his hand, is voting open the gates of opportunity and peace.

The morning breaks over blood-stained hills.  We must not falter, we may not shrink.

Above are the everlasting stars.

Information for you after the Snowpocalypse

Okay, assuming that we have school tomorrow, and that we don’t all kill ourselves on the unplowed roads of St. Louis County, especially the ice rink outside my house….

Monday will be a C day, because C days must follow B days.

Tuesday will be the new due date for chapter 29 outlines. If you have already done terms, you can show them to me TOMORROW for 25% extra credit. That means you have to show them to me tomorrow, if we have school.

Chapter 29 outlines are below this post. Always look in the archives if you don’t see outlines on the front page, because I have been having trouble getting on the internet the last couple of days. Make sure you understand the answer to the questions in the outlines– you may be accountable for an assignment over them. Of course, who KNOWS what will happen next in this crazy winter????

 

Keep checking here for posts to help make up for our missed instructional time, and make sure you have read the posts I have already put up. You are accountable for understanding this material.

Chapter 29 Outline on Wilsonian Progressivism

Chapter 29 Outline format

Due Tuesday. January 25, 2011

Make sure you actually go back and answer the questions included here. Explain WHY items are significant, or what impact they had.

I. Was Wilson an idealist or a realist, and what effect did his mindset have upon his presidency?
—A. What was Wilson’s background?
——1. Birthplace/culture
——2. Academics
——3. Religious
——4. Personality
——5. Race- was he a progressive in this area?
—B. The Election of 1912
——1. How did disarray in the Republican Party aid Wilson? Explain fully.
——2. Outline the “New Freedom” program.
——3. Contrast with the “New Nationalism.”
———a. Croly’s influence
——4. What does “Minority” president mean?
——5. What was surprising about Wilson’s victory?

II. What impact did progressivism have economically?
—A. The “Triple Wall of Privilege:” what does that mean?
—B Tariffs and Taxes
——1. What happens to tariff levels?
——2. What takes their place for revenue?
——3. What impact does this have on the economy?
—C. Was there really a banking “system?”
——1. Explain Pujo and the “Money monster.”
——2. Outline the Democratic plan.
——3. Federal Reserve Act, Board, and Notes: what do they do and how do they work?
——(What did the Fed do in the last few weeks and why?)
——4. Why is control of the currency supply important?
—D. Why were trusts and monopolies viewed as dangerous by consumers and workers?
——1. What does the FTC do?
———a. Why could it only investigate interstate commerce?
———(See the Constitution, Article I, sec. VIII)
——2. Why was the Sherman Act not enough?
——3. The “Magna Carta for Labor”- what was its impact?
—E. Worker’s Protection and benefits increase—but at a price?
——1. Fed Farm Loan Act
——2. La Follette Seamen’s Act: pros and cons
——3. Where did the “eight-hour day” come from?
——4. What about black workers?

III. Progressivism and Foreign Policy
—A. The death of “dollar diplomacy”
——1. Panama Canal fairness
——2. Resolving the status of the Philippines
——3. Turning the Caribbean into an “American lake”
—B. The limits of anti-imperialist idealism
——1. Haiti
——2. Dominican Republic
——3. Problems with Japan
———a. California laws
———b. Chinese railroads
——4. Mexico
———a. Huerta and Carranza
———b. Tampico
———c. Pancho Villa- the Frito Bandito in New Mexico
———d. Pershing goes on a Taco Bell run?
———e. Who helps us out of this mess?
—C. Outbreak of WWI and its early impact on the US
——1. Neutrality- how real was it?
——2. Were Americans businessmen “Merchants of Death?”
——3. Submarines make neutrality costly:
———a. Lusitania
———b. Sussex and the pledge
——4. Impact on the election of 1916: Did he “Keep Us Out of War?”