Sunday, September 13, 2015

Why might working-class women not celebrate the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment?

If working class women did not celebrate the passage of
the 19th Amendment, it would have been because they felt that they might not gain as
many benefits from the right to vote as middle class women
would.


During the Progressive Era, the progressives were
typically middle class "native" Americans.  One of their major goals was to impose their
values on Americans from other classes, including the working class.  Many of the
reforms that the Progressives tried to implement were aimed at changing the ways of the
working class.


Women of the working class might have felt
that the 19th Amendment would simply give more power to the middle class progressives. 
The middle class women would be the ones most likely to vote and, therefore, to have
influence over government.  This might have led to more reforms that would have been
used to change the ways of the working class.  It is likely that women of the working
class would not have welcomed such a change.

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