CHAPTER 14 • SECTION 2
More About . . .
Temperance Movements
One of the most influential temperance
organizations of the 1800s was the
Women’s Christian Temperance Union. By
the end of the century, it had an estimated
membership of more than 200,000 women,
making it one of the largest women’s
organizations in the United States. Frances
Willard, its first secretary (and later,
president), envisioned the WCTU as serving
a dual purpose: to campaign against the
sale and use of alcohol and to provide
a forum for advocating women’s rights.
Because of the WCTU’s identification with
women’s rights issues, powerful liquor
interests who opposed the organization
campaigned actively against women’s
suffrage.
Answer: The main
picture suggests
that giving up
alcohol will result
in a more peaceful
and harmonious life,
especially at home.
Temperance pledges
often featured inspiring
pictures and mottoes.
What does the main
picture suggest about
the benefits of giving
up alcohol?
Revival meetings—emotionally charged events in which religious leaders
hoped to attract followers—spread quickly across the country. Many groups,
such as Baptists and Methodists, gained converts during this time. Settlers
in the West eagerly awaited revivalist preachers like Peter Cartwright, who
spent more than 60 years preaching on the frontier. In Eastern cities, Charles
Grandison Finney held large revival meetings. He preached that selfishness
was sin and that faith led people to help others.
The spread of evangelical ideas awakened a spirit of reform. Many people
began to believe that they could help to right the wrongs of the world.
Temperance Heavy drinking was common in
the early 1800s. One response to this problem
movement
campaign
was the temperance movement—a
to stop the drinking of alcohol. Some men
spent most of their wages on alcohol, leaving
their families poor. As a result, many women
joined the movement.
Temperance workers handed out pamphlets
urging people to stop drinking and gave plays
dramatizing the evils of alcohol. They asked
people to sign a pledge to not use alcohol. By
1838, a million had signed.
In 1851, Maine banned the sale of liquor.
By 1855, 13 other states had passed similar
laws. Most of these laws were later repealed.
Still, the movement to ban alcohol remained
strong, even into the 20th century.
Creating Ideal Societies Some people
More About . . .
Contemporary Reform
Movements
Various organizations today work for
laws designed to prevent drunk driving
and to keep alcohol out of the hands of
minors. Among those organizations are
Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD)
and Students Against Destructive Decisions
(SADD) (formerly Students Against Drunk
Driving). SADD asks young adults to sign
a Contract for Life, in which the signer
pledges to avoid using alcohol and drugs.
Answer: The ideas that
anyone could choose
salvation and that
people should try to
right the wrongs of the
world encouraged some
Americans to try to make
society better.
wanted society to start anew. They aimed to
build an ideal society, called a utopia.
Religion led to some utopian experiments.
The Shakers followed the beliefs of English immigrant Ann Lee, who preached
that people should live in faith-centered communities. Shakers vowed not
to marry or have children. They shared all their goods with each other and
treated men and women as equals.
People called them Shakers because they shook with emotion during
church services. Shakers set up communities in New York, New England, and
on the frontier. Because they did not marry, Shakers depended on converts
and adoption to keep their communities going. In the 1840s, Shakers had
6,000 members. In 2005, only four remained.
Not all utopian communities were based on religion. Two well-known
experiments in communal living took place in New Harmony, Indiana, and
Brook Farm, Massachusetts. However, these communities experienced conflicts and financial difficulties. They ended after only a few years.
EVALUATE Explain how religion and philosophy encouraged people to try to
improve society.
More About . . .
The Shakers
Shakers were hard workers and their farms
prospered. They actively sought new ways
to make their labor efficient and easy.
Shakers invented many laborsaving devices,
including the buzz saw, a revolving oven,
and apple corers and parers. They sold
products such as garden seeds, herbs and
medicines, baskets, boxes, brooms, and
woven goods to the public. Shakers were
the first to package seeds in the small paper
envelopes still used today.
Unit 5 Resource Book
• Interdisciplinary Projects,
pp. 159–160
458 Chapter 14
DIFFERENTIATING INSTRUCTION
English Learners
Gifted & Talented
Language: Punctuation
Design a Utopian Community
Point out that the first sentence on this
page contains two dashes. Explain that
dashes can be used to:
Challenge students to design their
own utopian community, taking into
consideration such criteria as:
• set off parenthetical information
• underlying values
• location
• give special emphasis to an idea
• physical structures
• clothes
• show hesitation
• tasks
• social life
• conclude a list of elements that leads
to one thought or point
• goals
• mark an abrupt change of thought
458 • Chapter 14
Students can draw a map, sketches, or a
brochure to explain their community.
CHAPTER 14 • SECTION 2
Workers’ Rights
KEY QUESTION How did the labor movement try to improve working conditions?
Factory conditions were often unhealthy, and management could be unjust.
By the 1830s, American workers had begun to demand improvements.
Factory Life Most factory workers labored 12 or 14 hours a day for six days
a week. A typical workday began at five o’clock in the morning. It was not
unusual for workers to spend most of the workday in dark, hot, crowded
rooms with air so dirty that it was difficult to breathe. In the 1830s, many
workers began to call for a ten-hour workday.
Hoping to increase profits, factory owners sometimes cut workers’ pay and
forced them to increase their pace. It was also legal to pay women and children lower wages than men in similar jobs. Partly for this reason, the majority of workers at the mills in Lowell, Massachusetts, were young women.
Some of these women became active in the fight for workers’ rights.
Connect to the World
By the 1830s, a labor
movement had gathered
strength in Great Britain.
Like the American labor
movement, it sought
better conditions and a
shorter workday.
Organizing for Better Conditions The young women mill workers in
union—a group of workers who band
Lowell, Massachusetts, started a labor union
together to seek better working conditions. In 1836, the mill owners raised
the rent of the company-owned boarding houses where the women lived.
strike, stopping work to demand better condiAbout 1,500 women went on strike
tions. Eleven-year-old Harriet Hanson helped lead the strikers.
About 800 women
shoemakers march
during a strike in Lynn,
Massachusetts, in 1860.
PRIMARY SOURCE
“
I . . . started on ahead, saying, . . . ‘I don’t care what you do, I
am going to turn out, whether anyone else does or not,’
and I marched out, and was followed by the others. As I
looked back at the long line that followed me, I was
more proud than I have ever been since.
”
Teach
Workers’ Rights
Roleplay Your Answer
• Describe the working conditions in a typical
factory of the 1830s. (Factories were hot, dark,
crowded, and dirty. Our workdays lasted 12 to
14 hours, 6 days a week.)
• In what ways did some factory owners treat
their workers unfairly? (They reduced wages
to increase profits and forced us to work
faster. They also paid women less than they
paid men.)
• Problems and Solutions What course
of action did workers take to remedy their
situation? (We banded together in labor unions
to seek better working conditions. In Lowell,
Massachusetts, we women mill workers went
on strike after the owners raised the rent on the
boarding houses where we lived.)
—Harriet Hanson, quoted in Howard Zinn’s A People’s
History of the United States
Connect to the World
In 1835 and 1836, 140 strikes took place in the
eastern United States alone. Some striking workers
compared themselves to the American patriots
who had fought for freedom in the Revolutionary
War. In 1860, one group of workers began a strike
on Washington’s birthday.
Then the Panic of 1837 brought hard times
economically. Jobs were scarce, and workers were
afraid to cause trouble. The young labor movement
fell apart. Even so, workers achieved a few goals.
For example, in 1840 President Martin Van Buren
ordered a ten-hour workday for government workers.
When employers in the 1830s and 1840s cut
wages, workers felt that their independence
was threatened as well as their pay. Striking
workers called the factory owners “Tories
in disguise.” The women of the Lowell
mills noted that they were “daughters of
freemen” whose ancestors had fought
British tyranny.
SUMMARIZE Explain how the labor movement tried to
improve working conditions.
Answer: The labor movement brought together workers to
fight for better conditions. Workers formed labor unions and
participated in strikes.
Teacher-Tested Activities
A New Spirit of Change 459
INTERDISCIPLINARY ACTIVITIES
CONNECT
to Language Arts
CONNECT
to Music
Stage a Labor Movement Play
Analyze Reform Movement Songs
Have groups of students use the information on
this page to prepare and perform short plays
about the rise of the labor movement. Individual
groups can dramatize working conditions,
the formation of unions, strike efforts, or a
combination of these elements. Encourage
groups to do further research and present a
reenactment of a specific event in the history of
the labor movement.
In the 1960s, the folk song “We Shall
Overcome” served as the unofficial anthem of
the civil rights movement. What songs were
associated with the Second Great Awakening,
the temperance movement, or the labor
movement in the 1800s? Suggest that students
consult several American song anthologies,
as well as histories of these movements, to
find out. Students can analyze the songs to
determine in what ways their messages relate to
one of these movements. Have volunteers teach
a song to the class.
Brian McKenzie
Buffalo Public School #81
Buffalo, New York
Once the material on temperance reform and
workers’ rights has been discussed, I assign my
students the activity of creating a pamphlet
for one of the two movements. First I have
partners brainstorm to identify three things:
• groups involved in the movement (women,
religious groups)
• methods they used (pamphlets, plays,
demonstrations, picketing, speeches)
• goals of the movement (improved home life,
health, better wages, safer conditions)
Students design their own pamphlets. If we
have time, I have students create placards and
stage rallies in public areas of the school.
Teacher’s Edition • 459