American History

[Staunton]

Can you describe the role of women and minority races in the labor force in the United States after world war I?What were the losses and the gains in power and prestige of each?

[Cuilean]

AMERICAN FASHION   Long answer, Linda. Huge subject. Pencil and paper ready? Just remember World War I ended in 1918:   On August 13, 1918, Opha Mae Johnson became the first female Marine when she enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserve; over 300 women served in the Marines during World War One, performing duties within the United States so that the male Marines could fight overseas.

In 1918 twin sisters Genevieve and Lucille Baker became the first women to serve in the Coast Guard; they were the only women to serve in the Coast Guard during World War One.

After World War I ended in 1918, American women were no longer allowed to serve in the military, except as nurses, until World War II.

However, in 1920 a provision of the Army Reorganization Act granted military nurses the status of officers with "relative rank" from second lieutenant to major(but not full rights and privileges).

The 19th amendment to the Constitution, giving all American women the right to vote, passed in 1920. It came up before the House of Representatives in 1918 with the two-thirds votes needed for passage barely within reach; Representative Frederick Hicks of New York had been at the bedside of his dying wife but left at her urging to support the cause. He provided the final, crucial vote, and then returned home for her funeral. However, the Senate failed to pass the amendment that year. The amendment was approved by Congress next year on June 4, 1919, and the states started ratifying, with Tennessee the last state to do so in 1920.

The amendment passed the Tennessee Senate easily. However, as it moved on to the House, vigorous opposition came from people in the liquor industry, who thought that if women got the vote, they would use it to pass Prohibition. Distillery lobbyists came to fight the amendment, bringing liquor.

“Both suffrage and anti-suffrage men were reeling through the hall in an advanced state of intoxication,” suffragist Carrie Chapman Catt reported. Nevertheless, the suffragists thought they could count on a one-vote victory in the House. Then the speaker, whom they had counted on as a “yes” for the amendment, changed his mind. Yet suddenly, Harry Burn, the youngest member of the House, a 24-year-old "no" vote from East Tennessee, got up and announced that he had received a letter from his mother(Febb Ensminger Burn) telling him to "be a good boy and help Mrs. [Carrie Chapman] Catt." "I know that a mother’s advice is always the safest for a boy to follow", Burn said, switching sides, and the amendment was ratified that day, August 18, 1920, officially becoming part of the Constitution when it was signed into law on August 26, 1920.

Suffragist Carrie Chapman Catt calculated that the campaign for women's right to vote had involved 56 referendum campaigns directed at male voters, plus 480 campaigns to get Legislatures to submit suffrage amendments to voters, 47 campaigns to get constitutional conventions to write woman suffrage into state constitutions; 277 campaigns to get State party conventions to include woman suffrage planks, 30 campaigns to get presidential party campaigns to include woman suffrage planks in party platforms and 19 campaigns with 19 successive Congresses.   The first wave of feminism is generally considered to have ended in 1920 when American women won the right to vote.    Now for the second wave:    The question of whether women should work had been settled as decisively as the one about them driving, and people seemed pleased with the notion that the spunks American girl, compact in one hand and automobile in the other, was ready for anything. "Within the space of a single day, one can ride in a taxi driven by a woman, directed by traffic signals designed by a woman, to the office of a woman engineer, there to look out of the windw and observe a woman steeplejack at her trade" enthused the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences in 1929. But the lady steeplejack was more an example of the twenties' love affair with stunts and oddities than the beginning of a trend. The proportion of women in the workforce was actually lower in 1930 than it had been in 1910, and women professionals were concentrated almost entirely in four areas - teaching, nursing, social work, and librarires. Dr Lilian Walsh, a longtime practitioner, conclued sadly that women doctors had become as fashionable as "a horse and buggy". Any woman ready to announce that she was trading in her law books for a cookbook could find a ready market for her memoirs in the women's magazines.

For most women, work was a brief interlude between school and marriage. They made much less than men; in 1927 the average weeks wage for a man was $29.35 and for a woman it was $17.34. Women were also likely to be overqualified for the work they could get. One writer in the Atlantic, surveying the business world, concluded that the boss's secretary was more likely to be a college graduate than he was. Although there were plenty of poor women and single mothers who depended on their paychecks, society generally liked to think of the working girl as a young thing saving money to fill her hope chest. "I pay our women well so they can dress attractively and get married" said Henry ford.

The idea that women might not get married had gone out of style. Now that Americans had been convinced that women needed sex, the idea that they might march into middle age without husbands began to look either pathetic or sinister. Vassar College started offering courses in "Motherhood" and "Husband and Wife".     I've included the "losses and gains" in the answer, Linda. Thanks again.                                        HANK