so these trades unions these early labor unions fought for free public education thinking that would benefit their children and help them get better jobs they fought for the abolition of debtors prisons they fought for the 10 hour work day and then it'll take a few more decades before they fight for the eight-hour workday that we have today the national trades union the first national union formed in 1834 and held more than 150 strikes that decade and they successfully pushed the government to accept the 10-hour workday for most skilled workers so once the government accepts that a lot of other private companies are going to have to kind of get on board with the 10-hour workday as well but the panic of 1837 decimated membership the native-born white working class also increasingly saw immigration as a threat to both their jobs and their protestant values because a lot of these immigrants were catholic and they feared catholics so these protestant working-class people tended to join nativist organizations and again nativism is a fear or hatred of allegedly undesirable immigrants so the native born working class tried to stop mass immigration from europe and they tried to limit the political rights of catholic immigrants already in the united states now this working class is being treated pretty rough by people who own these factories but there's no suggestion that if there are fewer workers that they would be treated any better so they're kind of aiming at the the wrong issue here native-born workers embraced temperance the limiting of one's alcohol consumption so that's one way that the native born working class will try to define itself against the immigrant working class working class immigrants saw temperance as just the business class trying to control them trying to interfere in their lives and both the immigrant and the native born working class argued that black workers should be confined to the worst jobs and they often refuse to work alongside black workers both groups fought to keep women from having good jobs as well white working-class men argued that their own wages would be higher if women were barred from the workplace entirely so they'll help lock wage earning women into the lowest paying and most exploited jobs oftentimes labor union activists will talk about a family wage that a man needs to make enough money to take care of his spouse and his children but the flip side of that argument is that women shouldn't be working or if they're working they certainly don't deserve the pay that men deserve so there are lots of arguments out of this about what which workers deserve what kind of compensation and what type of jobs we've got a nativist cartoon here so there's uncle sam holding his nose at the alleged gates of the united states and there's an immigrant who is stereotypically jewish his rather anti-semitic cartoon here and it says welcome uh but the immigrant is bringing with him sabbath desecrations he's going to do stuff on sunday that he's that protestant americans wouldn't want him to do he's bringing disease and poverty so this is a very nativist idea of what immigrants bring to the united states even though for the most part we are a nation of immigrants now before the 1830s women were seen as less moral than men so this is kind of the story of eve which is either the first or second woman depending on your biblical interpretation she's the first human to sin and then she kind of entices the first man and he sends or has a moral failing for those of you who are unfamiliar with that term by the 1830s women came to be seen as by nature being more virtuous and spiritual and pious than men so we see a flip in how society views men and women men were seen as being engulfed in the sinful public world so they're out in public and it can be very corrupting so to not be corrupted men depended upon a healthy family life and a good christian woman who'll kind of keep him straight this will also serve as a bit of an excuse for men to do crappy things out in the world as long as they come home and be good family men evangelicals enshrined women as the moral superiors of men so we talked about all the way back to the puritans and the pilgrims and kind of early american colonists that it was just the reverse they thought women were more sinful more likely to have moral failings or even to be witches as we've talked about with salem now we're seeing the flip this emphasis on the role of mothers and on the family was in part a response to the rapid economic and political changes the nation was experiencing as children grew up in an ever-changing society with lots of social instability society put more emphasis on the importance of family americans embraced this sanctified notion of motherhood as the christian nurturing of souls popular female authors told women that quote the future of the republic is in your hands and this elevated family role of middle class white women came to be known as the cult of true womanhood you'll also hear it referred to as the cult of domesticity it becomes part of middle class values and really to live up to this standard you have to have money you have to be solidly middle class probably not working where your husband's wage is enough to keep the family at home so they argued that biological differences in the evangelical god's natural order determined separate social roles for men and women so the idea here is that men were aggressive and they naturally belonged in the competitive world of business and politics while women's god-given task was to preserve religion and morality in the home and within the family so at any point in time in any society you look out men and women tend to have different roles but they're always overlapping and sometimes they really overlap and men and women can do almost all the same stuff and sometimes they pull almost all the way apart and there's very little that men and women can both do according to the the social precepts of the time so we're talking about a time here between the 1830s and 50s in which those fears pull as far apart as they can without actually coming apart the idea of a woman's separate sphere or her separate role led to her exclusion from other spheres of life including politics and this is so profound that words that we don't even consider to be gendered become gendered so their meaning changes uh whether or not they are being applied to men or women so for example a public man what do you think a public man would mean in the 19th century a man of people a politician right so a public man is a politician what's a public woman a prostitute right now we don't think of the word public as being gendered but because of these ideas about who's allowed to be out in public and who's allowed to be kind of walking public streets that word really does become gendered in its connotation families also became smaller as the birth rate fell by about 25 in the first half of the 19th century but the expectations from motherhood grew to fill that void created by having fewer children and we often see this whether it's having fewer children or labor-saving technology anytime the the job of mothers seems like it's going to get easier society increases its demands and the job actually either stays the same or if anything gets a little harder goadie's lady book was kind of the magazine of the time period and along with the goatee's lady book novels of the time and the media emphasized this cult of true womanhood of this cult of domesticity and separate spheres and there's a couple of tenets of really big themes within this cult of true womanhood what white middle-class women are supposed to be the first one is purity and when they're talking about purity and women in the 19th century the only thing they're talking about is sex they're not talking about morals or character just sex in the books of the early to mid 19th century the loss of one's purity resulting in madness or death right so sex outside of marriage for women would result in madness or death in these works of fiction so there's a whole genre of these things called seduction novels like charlotte temple in 1794 which warned women against losing their purity so that's kind of the most famous one it's the earliest of them there's a whole genre of these books and spoiler alert charlotte dies in the end of the book as do most of the fallen women in seduction novels now part of what they're actually trying to teach women with these books is that now that they're moving to cities and larger numbers that community that used to kind of force a couple to be married if they got pregnant isn't there anymore so pre-marital sex is more dangerous in cities after the market revolution for women than it had been in smaller towns where the town would have rallied and said no you really do have to marry her right we know you were with her right you've got to marry her that protection isn't there for women anymore so those seduction novels will kind of be like a guide for what can happen when a woman moves to the city the cult of true womanhood argued that women had to demonstrate their moral superiority over men by resisting them and that men would then be grateful to women who saved them from themselves so this is like i said a warning for rural women moving to cities that town can't protect you now so it really is important that you be very careful with who you're with another tenant of this idea is piety piety basically just means being religious women were expected to be religious in a way that men were not so if men weren't in church on sunday it really wasn't a big deal but if women aren't in church on sunday that could cause some gossip domesticity is a big part of this so the idea is that a true woman's place was her own fireside where she should be nursing cooking knitting taking care of kids taking care of her husband those types of things if you ever read little women or watch one of the movies the mom in that book definitely a true woman submissiveness is another part of the cult of domesticity this is the most important of the virtues as well and it basically said that women were to be subordinate to men so even if a woman thinks she's right even if she knows her husband is wrong she's supposed to go along with whatever he is saying or doing because it's her job to submit to him for the sake of good order and a lot of this is about kind of orderliness in society now the separation of work and home was really important to middle class identity men had public roles women had private roles at least that was the way it was supposed to be so this is the height of distinct gender roles of differentiated or separate spheres where men and women are not supposed to be doing the same types of things now the majority of women did not and could not live up to the ideas of true womanhood it required a family to be white and middle class because the mother had to abstain from paid labor and the private nuclear family that was so central to the middle class that was kind of exalted in this idea also happened to be the locale for domestic violence sexual abuse and alcohol abuse which led a lot of women into social reform so social reformers began to combat these issues and more as many women began engaged in public activities related to their domestic roles so one way to think of this is not necessarily that women are just stepping out into public roles trying to reform society at least not outright but they may step into those public rules by saying as a wife as a mother i have to do these things even if i don't like speaking out now one of the first goals of the women's movement of the 19th century was coverture so they want to fight coverture under british common law and the laws of the early united states women suffered civil death at marriage and they were subsumed by their husband's legal identity so it's called coverture in which his legal identity covers yours so i wouldn't be dr rachel gunter i would be mrs christopher matthew right that would be the only legal identity i would have so women could not own property if they were married they couldn't testify in court they couldn't sign contracts because legally they don't exist they are covered by their husband and he has to do all of those things so women began to push for married women's property rights the ability to own and protect their own private property both from their husbands when they got married and from their husbands creditors if their husband wasn't so business savvy or got caught up in one of those panics like the the panic of 1837 and lost his property so if the creditors come calling they can take her property too because it's legally his so the first bill that would have granted married women the same rights to their earnings and property as single women and as all men was introduced in new york in 1836 but it didn't pass but that's an important part of that bill to talk about they're earning so if you have working-class woman and she is working her husband legally owns her paycheck she does not so that can create a lot of problems especially with domestic violence and alcohol abuse now the panic of 1837 increased calls for these measures to protect married women from their husbands creditors seizing their property and of all of the states to first pass to reform like this it was mississippi that first allowed married women to own property in 1839 now knowing that it's mississippi what kind of property do you think they were trying to protect it protected wise from having their enslaved human beings confiscated when their husband was in debt though new york will pass a much more liberal married women's property act in 1848 so this is going to be a state by state thing during the second great awakening the middle class set out to shape other people's behavior using their own evangelical religious beliefs so finney's ideas of perfectionism argue that society as a whole could be made perfect the temperance movement tried to shape a more perfect american society temperance the prohibition of alcohol was the largest of these reform movements by far it provided a religious excuse for employers and entrepreneurs attempting to control the moral lives of their communities and employees abstinence from alcohol became the most telling sign of middle-class respectability and this is at a time when americans drink way more than they do today but wouldn't it be nice as an employer to be able to have a sober workforce that is neither hungover or drunk when they're working your machinery so that's the idea here they're trying to kind of control working-class peoples and they have this religious motivation as well as an economic motivation for doing so through reform movements like temperance middle-class reformers tried to control the behavior of both the middle and working class in all sorts of ways so we have here some of the propaganda and pamphlets from this temperance movement that tried to encourage people either to not drink to access or to not drink at all so this is the morning dream so he he's drinking in the morning which is very common in this era then we have the grog shop so he's after work at the bar basically the confirmed drunkard so he's home beating you know kids he's drunk he's out of it uh and the final scene he's dead right the family's there without him so the idea is that this is where alcohol will lead you now i said that americans are drinking way more than we do today but between 1790 and 1830 americans consumed more alcohol per person than ever before or ever since so if your lineage has been in the united states long enough your great great whatever grandparents could have drunk you under the table since the revolution whiskey became america's most popular beverage it had been rum but rum mostly came from the west indies and that kind of trade was really hindered by both the revolution and the war of 1812 whiskey you can make in the united states hence the whiskey rebellion so whiskey becomes really popular it's also considered patriotic partially because it's made in the united states partially because of the symbolic opposition to tea drinking after the revolution and there was no separation of work time and play time for drinking so people drank with breakfast in the morning yes even the kids they drank at lunch they had an afternoon drink they often had alcohol with dinner then they'd have a night cap they were drinking all day long americans in the 1830s drink at work they drink in the courtrooms they drink at elections so the temperance movement was directed at a real social evil which is alcoholism which had reached epidemic proportions and became an endemic problem across the united states by the 1820s now when production and technology increased during the market revolution alcohol became increasingly cheap it's cheaper than milk or beer and it's safer than water indoor plumbing was non-existent and clean water was hard to come by in cities there was a cultural aversion to water frankly because it often made people sick they argued it lacked food value that it didn't aid in digestion they said animals drink water not people medical science even debated the necessity or value of consuming water on a regular basis they didn't have a lot of wine that's really aristocratic uh americans aren't growing wine until about the 1850s in california it doesn't work in new england it doesn't work kind of the midwest so any wine they have is imported which means it's expensive so you've got to be pretty wealthy to be uh drinking wine there's not a lot of beer yet german immigration in the mid 19th century will bring that in the 1850s and 60s but it's not super popular from the 30s through the 50s there's some rum still there's certainly gin but they're mostly drinking whiskey and hard cider and while alcohol consumption was higher among men than women everyone was drinking and many were drinking to excess hard liquor was consumed with meals as the table beverage even at breakfast children were imbibing along with adults alcohol was used to pay laborers taverns became shelters for poor wage laborers and working class neighborhoods and they easily outnumbered churches the u.s outranked all other western countries americans in the 1820s and 30s on average consumed seven times the amount of alcohol that 21st century americans drink per capita alcohol consumption of distilled beverages in the 1820s was triple what it is today so again we've got another one of those temperance cartoons here you've got the fruits of intemperance so the fruits of drinking and this kind of always ends up with the guy dying and the family being put out in the cold on their own and then you've got the fruits of temperance and there's the family all together with their health and going to church again there's a lot of religious connotations to the temperance movement so temperance was the effort to limit the mass alcohol consumption in the united states and enforce order a lot of this is about orderliness the movement was led by a presbyterian minister from connecticut named lyman beecher and it had the greatest impact on the most people of any reform movement of this era remember that because we're going to talk a lot about a lot of reform movements in the next week but this had the greatest impact on the most people of any reform movement of the era millions of americans participated in the temperance movement they passed blue laws which outlawed the selling or serving of alcohol especially on certain religious days like sunday and of course texas still has that ban in place they passed pledges for moderation or abstinence and they redefined alcohol consumption as being bad temperance targeted drunkenness as an impediment a barrier to individual progress that basically said if you're going to be successful you can't be drinking lyman beecher's second great awakening sermons against drink were widely distributed and beecher said that to the temperance movement was based on a new moral power in the 1830s freedom increasingly was seen as moral principles about self-discipline so the freedom to not kind of give in to the things one wants and these ideas of perfectionism and a new moral power emerged alongside the market revolution again they're linked market-oriented economics and evangelical christian theology shared the same logic here both emphasized individual behavior individualism and both concluded that any bad outcome was no one's fault but your own so it's incredibly individualistic evangelical reformers viewed in temperance as the greatest obstacle to a republic of self-disciplined citizens so drink was seen as a threat to public morality they saw it as a loss of self-control and moral responsibility which spawned crime and disorder and above everything else it threatened the family and remember how important that white middle-class family is to american culture in the 1830s drinking was mainly a male vice since women drank but they tended not to drink hard liquor that they're probably going to be drinking hard cider so the main target of temperance propaganda was the husband or father who abused neglected or abandoned his wife and children because he was a slave to the bottle as alcoholism increased reformers progressed from advocating moderation and liquor consumption to full-on abstinence of alcohol in what they called the cold water army beecher founded the american temperance society in 1826 and their original aim was to encourage abstinence from ardent spirits or hard liquor so in the 1820s even in the movement there was no agreement on the evils of beer and wine which seemed like less of a threat as this movement progresses they're going to move to full-on abstinence from any type of alcohol the ats sent out speakers they issued literature they sponsored essay contests they sponsored revival specifically aimed at encouraging worshipers to give up alcohol now they needed to finance this massive propaganda campaign if they were going to change americans attitudes towards alcohol the drinking habits of the poor and the laboring classes really concerned the middle and upper classes who wanted orderliness and a sober working class that could actually work in those factories so temperance groups received generous financial subsidies from wealthy benefactors which they then used to broadcast millions of tracks printed on the latest high-speed presses that were products of the market revolution within 10 years the ats had more than 5 000 local chapters and statewide affiliates most of which were in the northeast and they had about two million members remember this is antebellum america there's not that many people and they've got two million americans signed up now of course part of that is the communication revolution so how they're communicating printing technology those types of things are increasing allowing them to reach this many people women reformers made up between one-third and one-half of the temperance movement women lacked legal protections against abusive husbands so as we've said their paychecks legally belong to their husbands so if their husband was an alcoholic there was no way to stop him from drinking away the family budget she literally did not have a right to that money so drunkenness was seen as a male vice but temperance focused on its victims wives and children temperance allowed women to criticize men for failing to live up to the marital bargain by which wives were supposed to subordinate themselves to their husbands as long as men were reliable breadwinners and even-handed patriarchs so women joined temperance societies in the temperance movement as the moral protectors of the family and they then pressured their husbands to take the tea totaler's pledge which means to not drink a single drop of alcohol so if you're a tea totaler you don't drink any alcohol at all whatsoever these women raise sons and daughters to shun alcohol and they banished liquor from their homes too the first waves of temperance was dominated by the upper and middle classes by 1840s the temperance movement became a hallmark of middle class respectability so if your middle class or your upper class like you're not going to drink at least not publicly because it has a working class connotation many americans feared all of the change going on in the 19th century and what better way to establish some kind of control than to have a sober public and when you expand suffrage like they've been doing you want those voters sober at least you would hope so right drunkenness was a convenient explanation for why so many suffered dramatic downward social mobility and lost everything they owned lost jobs lost farms lost homes and just suffered severe economic decline during the market revolution and shortly thereafter when really a lot of that is just because of the market revolution businessmen and employers feared drunkenness could subvert their businesses so the crusade to ban alcohol threatened to intrude into the family life of lower working-class people mainly irish catholics and this exacerbated class ethnic and racial and religious tensions but the movement made limited inroads into the working class during the panic of 1837 so we finally see some of these working class groups embracing temperance small businessmen and artisans formed the washingtonian society in 1840 washingtonians insisted that workers could survive the depression if only they stopped drinking and adopted the temperance ethic of frugality and self-help so yeah the economy's crap and you're probably not going to be able to job get a job and you really can't feed your families but if you stop drinking it'll all be okay right it's very individualistic in a system that isn't necessarily so much they held weekly meetings to testify to their own struggles with demon drink now what other groups can you think of hold weekly meetings to talk about how much they struggle with demon drink right so alcohol alcoholics anonymous is kind of coming out of these groups at a much later date so the results of the temperance movement it altered the drinking patterns of regular americans forever we have never gone back to drinking as much as we did before the temperance movement per capita consumption of hard liquor declined more than 50 percent during the 1830s so americans drank half of what they had in the 20s and per capita consumption continued to decline over the next two decades by 1850 americans drank one third of what they had in 1830 per capita so individual alcohol consumption fell from an all-time high a 7.1 gallons of pure alcohol per year per person in 1830 to less than two gallons per year by 1845. today it's about 2.6 gallons and again you can see a lot of this temperance propaganda here so here is the guy just having an occasional drink and then it becomes more of a thing by this point he's pretty much an alcoholic it starts to show on him and spoiler alert most of these things end up either with the dad dying of alcohol poisoning or killing himself and there's the the poor woman and child who are left without their patriarch so there you have it how was the second great awakening a response to the market revolution what reforms did it launch we got into one or two of those today how did women's participation in reform movements challenge the cult of true womanhood so we talked about how they used their roles as mothers and wives to kind of step into public places but doesn't the cult of true womanhood say they're not supposed to be in those public places so you should know a little bit about that if you've got all that hit the next button at the bottom of the page and take the effects of the market revolution recap quiz