Jane Addams: “Why Women Should Vote”

Exploring the Primary Sources That Shaped America
Table of Contents
Jane Addams:“Why Women Should Vote”
Overview
Context
About the Author
Explanation and Analysis of theDocument
Audience
Impact
Document Text

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Abstract

Jane Addams was part of the Progressive movement, a broad and diverse middle-class coalition that, at the turn of the twentieth century, tried to reform American society and reconcile democracy with capitalism. The steady industrialization and urbanization of the 1880s and 1890s had deeply transformed American society, spurring harsh conflicts between labor and management. The middle class had supported the process of industrialization by espousing the Victorian values of laissez-faire individualism, domesticity, and self-control. By the 1890s it was apparent that these values had trapped the middle class between the warring demands of big business and the working classes.

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