Interpreting Secondary Sources
1. The title of the document is "Women in Industrializing America"
2. The author is Stacy A. Cordery.
3. Cordery focuses on how the origins of modern America affected both white and black women with regards to the tensions that plagued the country on the cusp of the twentieth century, revolving primarily around industrialization, the urban experience, and the development of woman's "separate sphere".
4. The educational, socially-conscious, and industrialized mindset of American society heavily influenced the middle and working class women, while the values and pressures of this time carried over as a presage to the "new woman" of the Progressive Era.
5. "Middle-class men counted their worth in dollars and affirmed their masculinity by participating in men's rituals such as politics, fraternal associations, and sports- and both their masculine and economic credentials were validated in the figure of their pious, pure, domestic, submissive, and leisured wife" (Cordery 120).
"By the turn of the century, one in seven women was employed. Most were single and fending for themselves... The industrial workforce... created many social ills that middle-class women determine they should try to correct" (Cordery 121).
"Many nineteenth century women's reliefs organizations began as study clubs- themselves a continuation of an earlier movement for women's self-improvement- but branched out to render relief to the poor, or to care for orphans and 'wayward women'" (Cordery 121).
"From praying in saloons, the [Women's Christian Temperance Union], the WCTU went on to run newspapers, own businesses, pay temperance speakers to preach the evils of alcohol, and care for the children of alcoholics" (122).
"[Women] communicated their shock, horror, and sadness at the conditions of their cities to their colleagues and them set to work" (Cordery 122).
"Separate female institutions boosted women's self-esteem, turned them into expert parliamentarians, introduced them to a wider world, put them at ease in their public spaces, and provided home with invigorating supportive circles of friends and coworkers" (123).
"Black women had been organizing benevolent societies, often church related, since the colonial era, and the acceleration of industrialization with its accompanying social ills generated more associations" (123).
6. Was this attitude of women considered acceptable, or was there more backlash than hinted at here?
What were the major consequences, socially and politically, of this advancement?
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