Women's Suffrage Movements During The Progressive Era

The Tides of Change Throughout American history, there have been many movements that have had varying impacts, but none as extensive and influential as the labor and woman’s suffrage movements. Both arose during the Progressive era in which reform movements swept across the United States to eliminate problems caused by industrialization and urbanization. Small-scale business operations were soon replaced by much larger corporation based ones that supported themselves on the hard labor of the people they employed, leaving appropriately named “robber barons” at the top. Men and a growing number of women in the workforce began to push back against these injustices primarily in the form of unions. Having proved that a women’s place was no longer
In particular, this act regulated working hours, overtime pay, and youth employment (Document 4). This act even continues to affect us today by raising the federal minimum wage and setting limits on the age, time, and type of work that youths who want to enter the workforce are allowed to do. This was only possible thanks to the work of people like “Mother” Jones and Gussie Rangnew who organized their “children’s crusade” which marched throughout the United States, often stopping and displaying the missing body parts of the children who worked in dangerous factory conditions (Musslewhite, Parsons, et al. 475). This particular march achieved its goal to promote awareness around the nation to the crime of child
Often women were forced to take jobs that men considered to be more to their skillset in occupations such as textiles. Women young and old were hired to attend 3 looms at once, 4 if they were skilled, for 13 hours a day in hot, stuffy conditions in which cotton and dust particles lingered in the air to be breathed in, causing damage to the lungs (Document 1). These were the conditions of the mill factories in Lowell, Massachusetts and Manchester, New Hampshire, although similar conditions existed in almost every other similar