OC 9 How did the United States emerge as an imperial power in the 1890s? reating work, Unions, declared Samuel Gompers, the AFL's founder and longti president, should not pursue the Knights' utopian dream of "cooperative commonwealth." Rather, the labor movement should deve itself to negotiating with employers for higher wages and better language of the era's business culture. Indeed, the AFL policies he pio neered were known as "business unionism.” During the 1890s, union membership rebounded from its decline in the late 1880s. But at the same time, the labor movement became less and less inclusive. Abandoning the Knights' ideal of labor solidarity, the AFL restricted membership to skilled workers-a small minority of the labor force-effectively excluding the vast majority of unskilled workers and, therefore, nearly all blacks, women, and new European immigrants. AFL membership centered on sectors of the economy like printing and building construction that were dominated by small competitive businesses. AFL unions had little presence in basic industries like steel and rubber, or in the large-scale factories that now dominated the economy. their nature and join assertively in move- ments to change society. At the same time, the center of grav- ity of feminism shifted toward an outlook more in keeping with prevailing racial and ethnic norms. The movement continued to argue for women's equality in employment, education, and politics. But with increasing frequency, the native-born, middle-class women who dominated the suffrage move- ment claimed the vote as educated mem- bers of a “superior race.” "A Woman's Liquor Raid," an illustration in the National Police The Women's Era Immigrants and former slaves had been enfranchised with “ill-advised haste," declared Carrie Chapman Catt, president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (created in 1890 to reunite the rival suf- frage organizations formed after the Civil War). Indeed, Catt suggested, Gazette in 1879, depicts a group of extending the vote to native-born white women would help to counteract temperance crusaders destroying liquor containers in a Frederickstown, the growing power of the “ignorant foreign vote" in the North and the Ohio, saloon. dangerous potential for a second Reconstruction in the South. In 1895, the same year that Booker T. Washington delivered his Atlanta address, the National American Woman Suffrage Association held its annual convention in that segregated city. Like other American institutions, the organized movement for woman suffrage had made its peace with nativ- ism and racism. force BECOMING A WORLD POWER Changes in the women's movement reflected the same combination of expanding activities and narrowing boundaries. The 1890s launched what would later be called the “women's era”--three decades during which women, although still denied the vote, enjoyed larger opportunities than in the past for economic independence and played a greater and greater role in public life. Nearly 5 million women worked for wages in 1900. Although most were young, unmarried, and concentrated in traditional jobs such as domestic service and the garment industry, a generation of college-educated women was beginning to take its place in better-paying clerical and professional positions. Through a network of women's clubs, temperance associations, and social reform organizations, women exerted a growing influence on pub- lic affairs. Founded in 1874, the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) grew to become the era's largest female organization, with a membership by 1890 of 150,000. Under the banner of Home Protection, it moved from demanding the prohibition of alcoholic beverages (blamed for leading men to squander their wages on drink and treat their wives abusively) to a comprehensive program of economic and political reform, including the right to vote. Women, insisted Frances Willard, the group's president, must abandon the idea that “weakness” and dependence were The New Imperialism The global context In world history, the last quarter of the nineteenth century is known as the age of imperialism, when rival European empires carved up large parts of the world among themselves. For most of this period, the United States remained a second-rate power. The “new imperialism” that arose after 1870 was dominated by European powers and Japan. Belgium, Great Britain, and France consoli- dated their hold on colonies in Africa, and newly unified Germany acquired colonies there as well. By the early twentieth century, most of Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and the Pacific had been divided among these empires. WORLD POW ation a larger Progressive fai Centers subal *sane Jane Addams and Hull House kompleo gappel Hall house - 1889 per wock a club, adultedu government could be In what ways did Progressivism include both democratic and antidemocratic impulses? cise intelligent control over society through a democracy run by i tial experts who were in many respects unaccountable to the ci an array of reforms in Chicago, soon adopted elsewhere, including stron- Political freedom was less a matter of direct participation in govern ger building and sanitation codes, shorter working hours and safer labor than of qualified persons devising the best public policies. conditions, and the right of labor to organize. The settlement houses have been called "spearheads for reform." Florence Kelley, a veteran of Hull House, went on to mobilize wom- en's power as consumers as a force for social change. Under Kelley's Florence Kelley leadership, the National Consumers' League became the nation's lead- But alongside this elitist politics, Progressivism also included a ing advocate of laws governing the working conditions of women and democratic vision of the activist state. As much as any other children. of Progressivism. Still barred from voting and holding office in Woment reformers and organized women reformers spoke for the more democratic Progressism states, women nonetheless became central to the political history of The Campaign for Woman Suffraget After 1900, the campaign for woman suffrage moved beyond the elit- Progressive era. The immediate catalyst was a growing awareness amo ism of the 1890s to engage a broad coalition ranging from middle-class enot serral thousan women reformers of the plight of poor immigrant communities a members of women's clubs to unionists, socialists, and settlement-house workers. For the first time, it became a mass movement. Membership in A mass movement worca the fact emergence of the condition of women and child laborers as a of public concern. the National American Woman Suffrage Association grew from 13,000 in 1893 to more than 2 million by 1917. By 1900, more than half the states how Cooker Search The era's most prominent female reformer was Jane Addams, w had been born in 1860, the daughter of an Illinois businessman. In 18 allowed women to vote in local elections dealing with school issues, and Wyoming, Colorado, Idaho, and Utah had adopted full woman suffrage. maler For childielen she founded Hull House in Chicago, a settlement house devoted improving the lives of the immigrant poor. Unlike previous reformers Between 1910 and 1914, seven more western states enfranchised women. In 1913, Illinois became the first state east of the Mississippi River to allow had aided the poor from afar, settlement-house workers moved into po n in the courtyard at Hull neighborhoods. They built kindergartens and playgrounds for childr women to vote in presidential elections. the settlement house These campaigns, which brought women aggressively into the pub- hed in Chicago by Jane established employment bureaus and health clinics, and showed femal victims of domestic abuse how to gain legal protection. By 1910, more the lic sphere, were conducted with a new spirit of militancy. They also made effective use of the techniques of advertising, publicity, and mass Mayor Mary W. Howard (c 400 settlement houses had been established in citis entertainment characteristic of modern consumer society. California's suc- the town council of Kanab throughout the country. They served from 1912 to cessful 1911 campaign utilized automobile parades, numerous billboards first all-female municipal Addams was typical of the Progressive era's "me and electric signs, and countless suffrage buttons and badges. Nonetheless, in American history. woman.” By 1900, there were more than 80,000 a state campaigns were difficult, expensive, and usually unsuccessful. The lege-educated women in the United States. Many foun movement increasingly focused its attention on secur- a calling in providing social services, nursing, an ing a national constitutional amendment giving women education to poor families in the growing cities. Th the right to vote. efforts of middle-class women to uplift the poor, an of laboring women to uplift themselves, helped to shi the center of gravity of politics toward activist gover Maternalist Reform ment. Women like Addams discovered that even Ironically, the desire to exalt women's role within organized social work was not enough to alleviate the the home did much to inspire the reinvigoration of problems of inadequate housing, income, and health the suffrage movement. Female reformers helped to Government action was essential. Hull House instigal launch a mass movement for direct government action M wel What were the competing visions of Reconstruction? hero, as their candidate for president, Grant's Democratic opponent was Horatio Seymour, the former governor of New York. Reconstruction became the central issue of the bitterly fought 1868 campaign. Democrats denounced Reconstruction as unconstitutional and condemned black suffrage as a violation of America's politi- cal traditions. They appealed openly to racism. Seymour's running mate, Francis P. Blair Jr., charged Republicans with plac- ing the South under the rule of "a semi- barbarous race” who longed to "subject the white women to their unbridled lust.” 3 16 13 5 3 12 12 5 6 8 VO 7 Before the Civil War, American citizenship had been closely linked to race. But the laws and amendments of Reconstruction repudiated the idea that citizenship was an entitlement of whites alone. And, as one con- Race and citizenship gressman noted, the amendments expanded the liberty of whites as well as blacks, including “the millions of people of foreign birth who will flock to our shores.” The new amendments also transformed the relationship between the federal government and the states. The Bill of Rights had linked civil liberties to the autonomy of the states. Its language-"Congress shall make no law”-reflected the belief that concentrated national power posed the greatest threat to freedom. The authors of the Reconstruction amendments assumed that rights required national power to enforce them. Rather than a threat to liberty, the federal government, in Charles Sumner's words, had become "the custodian of freedom." The Reconstruction amendments transformed the Constitution from Constitutional significance a document primarily concerned with federal-state relations and the rights of property into a vehicle through which members of vulnerable minori- ties could stake a claim to freedom and seek protection against misconduct by all levels of government. In the twentieth century, many of the Supreme Court's most important decisions expanding the rights of American citi- zens were based on the Fourteenth Amendment, perhaps most notably the 1954 Brown ruling that outlawed school segregation (see Chapter 24). Electoral Vote Popular Vote ndidate (Share) (Share) The Fifteenth Amendment ant 214 (73%) 3,012,833 (53%) mour 80 (27%) 2,703,249 (47%) Grant won the election of 1868, although Tuction by a margin–300,000 of 6 million votes electoral votes for Grant cast-that many Republicans found uncom- fortably slim. The result led Congress to adopt the Fifteenth Amendment, which prohibited the federal and state governments from denying any citizen the right to vote because of race. Bitterly opposed by the Democratic Party, it was ratified in 1870. Although the Fifteenth Amendment opened the door to suffrage restrictions not explicitly based on race-literacy tests, property qualifi- cations, and poll taxes-and did not extend the right to vote to women, it marked the culmination of four decades of abolitionist agitation. “Nothing in all history,” exclaimed veteran abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, equaled “this wonderful, quiet, sudden transformation of four millions of human beings from ... the auction-block to the ballot-box.” The Rights of Women Women and the limits of equality The "Great Constitutional Revolution" “The contest with the South that destroyed slavery," wrote the Philadelphia lawyer Sidney George Fisher in his diary, "has caused an immense increase in the popular passion for liberty and equality.” But advocates of women's rights encountered the limits of the Reconstruction commitment to equality. Women activists saw Reconstruction as the moment to claim their own emancipation. The rewriting of the Constitution, declared suf- frage leader Olympia Brown, offered the opportunity to sever the blessings of freedom from sex as well as race and to "bury the black man and the woman in the citizen." Even Radical Republicans insisted that Reconstruction was the “Negro's hour" (the hour, that is, of the black male). The Fourteenth Amend- ment for the first time introduced the word "male" into the Constitution, in its clause penalizing a state for denying any group of men the right to vote. The Fifteenth Amendment outlawed discrimination in voting based on race but not gender. These measures produced a bitter split both The laws and amendments of Reconstruction reflected the intersection of two products of the Civil War era-a newly empowered national state, and the idea of a national citizenry enjoying equality before the law. What Republican leader Carl Schurz called the “great Constitutional revolution" of Reconstruction transformed the federal system and with it, the language of freedom so central to American political culture. Voting rights 461 THE MAKING OF RADICAL RECONSTRUCTION To Pro
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