Prohibition and Suffrage During World War I: The War’s Dual Impact
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.47611/jsrhs.v11i3.2967Keywords:
Progressive Era, Prohibition, SuffrageAbstract
This study analyzes how World War I impacts two Progressive Era reforms—Prohibition and women suffrage—both positively and negatively. While the war promoted the passage of two constitutional amendments, it reduced the two movement’s commitment to reform that would benefit the society. Prohibition became quasi-authoritarian, intruding individual rights; suffrage turned conservative by adopting racist justifications in order to win support. This paper proposes a hypothesis that could explain this turn from progressivism to authoritarianism and conservatism, and discuss the two movements in detail to support the hypothesis.
Downloads
References or Bibliography
Act of October 28, 1919 [Volstead Act]; 10/28/1919; Enrolled Acts and Resolutions of Congress, 1789 - 2011; General Records of the United States Government, Record Group 11; National Archives Building, Washington, DC. [Online Version, https://www.docsteach.org/documents/document/volstead-act, July 4, 2021]
Agan, Kelly. “19th Amendment State Ratification Map.” Map. 2020.
Behn, Beth A. Woodrow Wilson's Conversion Experience: the President, the Woman Suffrage Movement, and the Extent of Executive Influence, 2004.
Buenker, John D., John Chynoweth Burnham, and Robert Morse Crunden. Progressivism. Rochester: Schenkman, 1986.
Catt, Carrie Chapman, and Nettie Rogers Shuler. Woman Suffrage & Politics: the Inner Story of the Suffrage Movement. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, Inc., 2020.
Catt, Carrie Chapman, Former Owner, and National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection. Woman Suffrage by Federal Constitutional Amendment. composeds by Catt, Carrie Chapman New York: Published by National Woman Suffrage Publishing Co., Inc, 1917. Pdf. https://www.loc.gov/item/17004988/.
Catt, Carrie Chapman. “Address before Congressional Hearing,” transcript of speech delivered April 20, 1917, https://awpc.cattcenter.iastate.edu/2018/10/08/address-before-congressional-hearing-april-20-1917/.
Church, Samuel H. “The Paradise of the Ostrich,” “Five Years of Prohibition and Its Results,” The North American Review, 1925
Cox, Jane. “Racism and Carrie Chapman CATT TODAY,” Iowa State Daily, November 8, 1995, https://www.iowastatedaily.com/racism-and-carrie-chapman-catt-today/article_d052fd29-c606-5c29-883a-068f5bce3b30.html.
Egge, Sara. “How Midwestern Suffragists Won the Vote by Attacking Immigrants.” Smithsonian.com. Smithsonian Institution, September 17, 2018. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-midwestern-suffragists-won-vote-by-attacking-immigrants-180970298/.
Gunter, Rachel Michelle. “Immigrant Declarants and Loyal American Women: How Suffragists Helped Redefine the Rights of Citizens.” The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 19, no. 4 (2020): 591–606. https://doi.org/10.1017/s153778142000033x.
Hamm, Richard F. Shaping the Eighteenth Amendment: Temperance Reform, Legal Culture, and the Polity, 1880-1920. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995.
“History of Alcohol Prohibition.” History of Alcohol Prohibition. Accessed August 3, 2021. https://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/LIBRARY/studies/nc/nc2a.htm.
Hofstadter, Richard. The Age of Reform. Knopf, 1972.
Kearney, Belle. “The South and Woman Suffrage.” NAWSA Convention, New Orleans, Louisiana, March 15-25, 1903. Reprinted in The History of Woman Suffrage, Vol.V, edited by Ida Husted Harper. New York, NY: National American Woman Suffrage Association,1922,82-83.
Keyssar, Alexander. The Right to Vote: the Contested History of Democracy in the United States. New York: Basic Books, 2009.
Kyvig, David E. “Women against Prohibition.” American Quarterly 28, no. 4 (1976): 465–82. https://doi.org/10.2307/2712541.
Link A.S., et al., eds (1966 – 94) The Papers of Woodrow Wilson. Princeton, N : Princeton University Press vol.39
Nugent, Walter. Progressivism: a Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.
“Prohibition and World War I.” History in the City Timeline. Accessed August 2, 2021. http://historyinthecity.weebly.com/prohibition-and-world-war-i.html.
Sabin Pauline Morton. "I Change My Mind on Prohibition," Outlook, 149, June 13, 1928
“Should Prohibition Be Repealed? - America in Class.” Accessed July 27, 2021. http://americainclass.org/sources/becomingmodern/divisions/text4/prohibitionrepeal.pdf.
Sinclair, Andrew. Prohibition the Era of Excess. Boston u.a.: Little, Brown & Co, 1962.
Steinson, Barbara J. Essay. In A Companion to Woodrow Wilson, edited by Ross A. Kennedy, 343–64. New York: Wiley & Sons, 2013.
Terborg-Penn, Rosalyn. African American Women in the Struggle for the Vote, 1850-1920. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1999.
The Woman Voter and The Next President. August 25, 2015. PJ Mode Collection of Persuasive Cartography. https://digital.library.cornell.edu/catalog/ss:3293843.
U.S. Const. amend. XVIII. Sec1 (repealed 1933).
Vote for the Woman Suffrage Amendment. April 14, 2017. PJ Mode Collection of Persuasive Cartography. https://digital.library.cornell.edu/catalog/ss:19343438.
Wilson, Woodrow. “Equal Suffrage,” transcript of speech delivered in the Senate of the United States on September 30, 1918, https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/resources/pdf/WilsonSpeech1918.pdf
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
Copyright (c) 2022 Jason Fu; Charles Argon
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Copyright holder(s) granted JSR a perpetual, non-exclusive license to distriute & display this article.
