Meanwhile women were entering nearly every branch of industry and business. How many of them worked at gainful occupations before 1870 we do not know; but from that year forward we have the records of the census. Between 1870 and 1900 the proportion of women in the professions rose from less than two per cent to more than ten per cent; in trade and transportation from 24.8 per cent to 43.2 per cent; and in manufacturing from 13 to 19 per cent. In 1910, there were over 8,000,000 women gainfully employed as compared with 30,000,000 men. When, during the war on Germany, the government established the principle of equal pay for equal work and gave official recognition to the value of their services in industry, it was discovered how far women had traveled along the road forecast by the leaders of 1848. The Club Movement among Women. All over the country women's societies and clubs were started to advance this or that reform or merely to study literature, art, and science. In time these women's organizations of all kinds were federated into city, state, and national associations and drawn into the consideration of public questions. Under the leadership of Frances Willard they made temperance reform a vital issue. They took an interest in legislation pertaining to prisons, pure food, public health, and municipal government, among other things. At their sessions and conferences local, state, and national issues were discussed until finally, it seems, everything led to the quest of the franchise. By solemn resolution in 1914 the National Federation of Women's Clubs, representing nearly two million club women, formally endorsed woman suffrage. In the same year the National Education Association, speaking for the public school teachers of the land, added its seal of approval. Again the suffrage movement Washington in 1910, California Arizona in 1912, Nevada and State and National Action. was in full swing in the states. in 1911, Oregon, Kansas, and Montana in 1914 by popular vote enfranchised their women. Illinois in 1913 conferred upon them the right to vote for Presi dent of the United States. The time had arrived for a new movement. A number of younger suffragists sought to use the votes of women in the equal suffrage states to compel one or both of the national political parties to endorse and carry through Congress the federal suffrage amendment. Pressure then came upon Congress from every direction: from Copyright by Underwood and Underwood, N. Y. CONFERENCE OF MEN AND WOMEN DELEGATES AT A NATIONAL CONVENTION IN 1920 the suffragists who made a straight appeal on the grounds of justice; and from the suffragists who besought the women of the West to vote against candidates for President who would not approve the federal amendment. In 1916, for the first time, a leading presidential candidate, Mr. Charles E. Hughes, speaking for the Republicans, endorsed the federal amendment and a distinguished ex-President, Roosevelt, exerted a powerful influence to keep it an issue in the campaign. National Enfranchisement. After that, events moved rapidly. The great state of New York adopted equal suffrage in 1917. Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Michigan swung into line the following year; several other states, by legislative action, gave women the right to vote for President. In the meantime the suffrage battle at Washington grew intense. Appeals and petitions poured in upon Congress and the President. Militant suffragists held daily demonstrations in Washington. On September 30, 1918, President Wilson, who, two years before, had opposed federal action and endorsed suffrage by state adoption only, went before Congress and urged the passage of the suffrage amendment to the Constitution. In June, 1919, the requisite twothirds vote was secured; the resolution was carried and transmitted to the states for ratification. On August 28, 1920, the thirty-sixth state, Tennessee, approved the amendment, making three-fourths of the states as required by the Constitution. Thus woman suffrage became the law of the land. A new political democracy had been created. The age of agitation was closed and the epoch of responsible citizenship opened. General References Edith Abbott, Women in Industry. C. P. Gilman, Woman and Economics. I. H. Harper, Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony. E. R. Hecker, Short History of Woman's Rights. S. B. Anthony and I. H. Harper, History of Woman Suffrage (4 vols.). J. W. Taylor, Before Vassar Opened. A. H. Shaw, The Story of a Pioneer. Research Topics The Rise of the Woman Suffrage Movement. McMaster, History of the People of the United States, Vol. VIII, pp. 116-121; K. Porter, History of Suffrage in the United States, pp. 135-145. The Development of the Suffrage Movement. Porter, pp. 228-254; Ogg, National Progress (American Nation Series), pp. 151-156 and p. 382. Women's Labor in the Colonial Period.-E. Abbott, Women in Industry, pp. 10-34. Abbott, pp. 35–62. Women and the Factory System. Women's Wages. - Abbott, pp. 262-316. Questions 1. Why were women involved in the reform movements of the new century? 2. What is history? What determines the topics that appear in written history? 3. State the position of women under the old common law. 4. What part did women play in the intellectual movement that preceded the American Revolution? 5. Explain the rise of the discussion of women's rights. 6. What were some of the early writings about women? 7. Why was there a struggle for educational opportunities? 8. How did reform movements draw women into public affairs and what were the chief results? 9. Show how the rise of the factory affected the life and labor of women. 10. Why is the year 1848 an important year in the woman movement? Discuss the work of the Seneca Falls convention. 11. Enumerate some of the early gains in civil liberty for women. 12. Trace the rise of the suffrage movement. Civil War. Show the effect of the 13. Review the history of the federal suffrage amendment. 14. Summarize the history of the suffrage in the states. CHAPTER XXIV INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY The New Economic Age. The spirit of criticism and the measures of reform designed to meet it, which characterized the opening years of the twentieth century, were merely the signs of a new age. The nation had definitely passed into industrialism. The number of city dwellers employed for wages as contrasted with the farmers working on their own land was steadily mounting. The free land, once the refuge of restless workingmen of the East and the immigrants from Europe, was a thing of the past. As President Roosevelt later said in speaking of the great coal strike, "a few generations ago, the American workman could have saved money, gone West, and taken up a homestead. Now the free lands were gone. In earlier days, a man who began with a pick and shovel might come to own a mine. That outlet was now closed as regards the immense majority. . . . The majority of men who earned wages in the coal industry, if they wished to progress at all, were compelled to progress not by ceasing to be wageearners but by improving the conditions under which all the wage-earners of the country lived and worked." The disappearance of the free land, President Roosevelt went on to say, also produced "a crass inequality in the bargaining relation of the employer and the individual employee standing alone. The great coal-mining and coal-carrying companies which employed their tens of thousands could easily dispense with the services of any particular miner. The miner. on the other hand, however expert, could not dispense with the companies. He needed a job; his wife and children would starve if he did not get one. Individually the miners |