Blog # 8

Textbook: Chapter 5
1. The significance in women's wage labor was that women were starting to be allowed into labor unions. Many women such as Leonora Barry and Mary Kenney were even appointed by unions to form women branches. Women fought for eight hour work days so that they would be able to go home and take care of families. Hypocritically, men did not want women to work at all, yet factory owners and owners of other companies men worked for would not allow for their salaries to be enough to cover at home expenses. One man said that women workers were unnecessary and an economic disadvantage (290).Working men and women aided the economic growth after the Civil War, increasing the wealth of the the upper-class business and factory owners. In turn, this new wealth allowed for more leisures and expenses for the upper- and middle-class women.

Textbook: Chapter 6
2. As white American settlers moved into the West, Native Americans were pushed out. The book describes how awful the whites treated Native Americans, often murdering and masacaring whole tribes of women, children, infants and men. The Native American women had to experience the suppression of the white man first hand. The first thing you notice about the three girls in the pictures is that they are not smiling. But what do they have to smile about? They have been taken away from their parents and tribe and have been forced to learn the ways of the white Americans' values, morals, language, and education. The Native American girls have physically learned the new values and dress, but they are still attached to their old ways.

Source Interpretation
Textbook document
1. Bessie Van Vorst meets many different girls in the factory that are there for varias reasons. Some work for their own pleasure, some work because they need to support their families. Many women were working to try to gain independences in hopes of gaining more rights and freedoms. They worked for spending money because their parents were fine with their money and could support their family comfortably. Many women though were working to support their large families and unworkable parents. Three girls were working to support their mother and to pay for the thirteen dollar a month rent, groceries and coal to keep them warm. Women's responses varied because no woman's family history, economic status, and needs were the same.

2. Von Vorst concludes “ There will be no strikes among them so long as the question of wages is not equally vital to them all...” (315). This means that since all the women are working for different reasons they as a group do not want the same things. Some women work for the littlest pay just so they can have extra spending money. Then there are the women who work themselves to death for as much as pay as their employer will allow them. Collectively they are unwilling to fight for themselves because no two women in the factory want the same thing. This idea of Von Vorst's is definitely a major factor to why working women are passive.