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Social Welfare Reform

Decent Essays

Many of the conflicting interests between different parties in the U.S. are what shaped our social welfare laws from the colonial period and after the civil war. When looking at the conflicts we faced back then, it is evident that the greater outlook in society was based off of morals and the Christian view our country was built on. These beliefs are still very prominent in our thinking as a society today although there have been some changes in our social welfare, that go against “the law of our creator”. One of the main conflicts that occurred after the civil war was specific to the growing population of immigrants. The conflict arose when many of the new immigrants began to take jobs in the mines, steel mills, textile factories, and other …show more content…

that established change in social welfare, was women entering public life after the civil war. During the civil war women took jobs that were vacated by men, and felt this was proof of equality. They were disappointed when the fourteenth amendment explicitly excluded women as voters (Stern & Axinn, 2012, p.101). Women were further marginalized in society when the fifteenth amendment extended suffrage to black men and excluded women. After the fifteenth amendment, the national African women’s suffrage association replaced the American equal rights association, and “asserted that women could increase the educated voting population and reduce the influence of the ignorant populace,” (Stern & Axinn, 2012, p.101). The number of women that were a part of this association was small mainly because it was frowned upon, society found it to be a call for political power and women who demanded it were suspect. The government and society at this time still favored the Christian outlook and stated that a woman’s nature is to attend home duties and men to do outside work, not only does the law of the creator say this but men’s physical ability to do outside work also solidified this view (Stern & Axinn,2012, p.103). Women did begin to join other organizations which allowed them to find outlets in the limiting world they lived in. These organizations included the women’s auxiliaries of the Patrons of Husbandry, the General Federation of Women’s Clubs, and especially the National Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) which became the most influential women’s organization in the country (Stern & Axinn,2012, p.101-102). Women were able to have these organizations in the public sphere because they were justified as something that could enrich motherhood. For example as technological advances took place and there began to be a falling birth rate women began to attend colleges, this was rationalized by the larger public as education for motherhood (Stern

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