America's Women

by Gail Collins

  On July 23, 1890… Larson, History of Wyoming, pp. 260–61.

  “Neither is handsome”… Larson, History of Wyoming, p. 87.

  Grace Greenwood… Dee Brown, p. 248.

  When the California legislature… Sidney Howell Fleming, “Solving the Jigsaw Puzzle: One Suffrage Story at a Time,” Annals of Wyoming (Spring 1990), pp. 33–73.

  Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper reported… Larson, History of Wyoming, p. 86.

  Discussing her service… James and James, eds., p. 584.

  CHAPTER 11: THE GILDED AGE

  “THERE WAS PLENTY OF HER TO SEE”

  The first part of this section, and much else in this chapter, relies heavily on Lois Banner’s American Beauty, particularly the chapter on “The Voluptuous Woman.” This is also my opportunity to recommend two books by Kathy Peiss: Hope in a Jar: The Making of America’s Beauty Culture, and Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the-Century New York.

  An Englishman reported… David Macrae, The Americans at Home, p. 40.

  Lillian Russell: There are a number of biographies of Russell. I used one by Armond Fields.

  “There was plenty…” Banner, pp. 135–36.

  In the 1890s, Metropolitan Magazine claimed… Banner, p. 151.

  Helen Hunt… Banner, p. 114.

  one photographer complained… Peiss, Hope in a Jar, p. 47.

  “She is a compound…” Peiss, Hope in a Jar, p. 27.

  They wore elaborate hats… Jennifer Price, Flight Maps, p. 59.

  The slaughter of wild birds… Price, p. 99.

  “I went down and saw…” Daniel Sutherland, The Expansion of Everyday Life, p. 256.

  In New York, one Coney Island… Peiss, Cheap Amusements, pp. 127–32.

  The single most important new public amenity… To learn more about early department stores, try Counter Cultures, by Susan Porter Benson.

  Mary Antin… Antin’s story of her experiences as a young immigrant, The Promised Land, is one of the best memoirs of turn-of-the-century immigrant life.

  Nathaniel Fowler… Douglas, The Feminization of American Culture, p. 67.

  “QUALITIES WHICH ALL SOUND-HEARTED

  MEN AND WOMEN ADMIRE”

  Nellie Bly… The definitive biography of Bly and an excellent history of women in turn-of-the-century journalism is Brooke Kroeger’s Nellie Bly.

  In 1870, the country had only five female lawyers… Anyone wondering why there weren’t more can read the biography of Myra Bradwell, America’s First Woman Lawyer, by Jane Friedman.

  In 1869, a few women… Theodora Penny Martin, The Sound of Our Own Voices, p. 44.

  Thanks in large part… Thomas Schlereth, Victorian America: Transformations in Everyday Life, p. 74.

  An in-house newspaper… Peiss, Cheap Amusements, p. 49.

  The men in the mail-order… Peiss, Cheap Amusements, p. 62.

  As the federal bureaucracy… Schlereth, p. 75.

  Women were making rapid… Dee Garrison, “The Tender Technicians,” in Hartman and Banner, eds., p. 164.

  The typewriter was a new… My information about typists comes, except when otherwise noted, from Margery Davies’s Woman’s Place Is at the Typewriter.

  when Mrs L. V. Longley… Bruce Bliven, The Wonderful Writing Machine, p. 112.

  Marion Harland, in an essay… Davies, pp. 81–82.

  At the turn of the century… Bliven, pp. 12–13.

  In 1904, the organizer of the first… Bliven, p. 76.

  “WE HAD A LOVELY PICTURE OF HER

  WE GOT WITH COFFEE WRAPPERS”

  The American public fell madly… The best portrait of Mrs. Cleveland is in Carl Anthony’s First Ladies.

  Far away in Colorado… Anne Ellis, The Life of an Ordinary Woman, p. 128.

  “LURED WOMEN FROM THEIR DUTIES AS HOMEMAKERS”

  This section is based on Theodora Penny Martin’s great book about the study club movement, The Sound of Our Own Voice.

  Josephine Ruffin… Anne Firor Scott presented a paper, “Most Invisible of All,” on black women’s voluntary associations that was published in The Journal of Southern History in February 1990. Elizabeth Fortson Arroyo has a profile on Josephine Ruffin in Black Women in America, Hine, ed., vol. 2, pp. 994–97.

  “WAS THAT CROQUET?”

  In 1883, the travel writer… Kenneth Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier, p. 25.

  “I saw the scamp…” Sutherland, p. 76.

  “ZINC COFFINS”

  This section includes information from one of my favorite housekeeping books: Susan Strasser’s Never Done: A History of American Housework.

  A study by the Boston… Strasser, p. 41.

  All in all, sweeping… Schlereth, p. 131.

  Some experts decried the idea of bodily… Sutherland, p. 60.

  Even in houses with bathtubs… Maureen Ogle, All the Modern Conveniences, p. 114.

  Catharine Beecher… Schlereth, p. 128.

  In 1893 in New York, far and… Goldsmith, p. 424.

  “OH, DOCTOR, SHOOT ME, QUICK!”

  When the reformer… Goldsmith, p. 424. Although this book is, alas, not going into Victoria Woodhull’s career, or the Beecher sex trial that she precipitated, I would urge everybody to take a stroll down that path. Barbara Goldsmith’s Other Powers is the best guide.

  Removing the clitoris… G. J. Barker-Benfield writes about this in The Horrors of the Half-Known Life. Except when noted, my information is from her book.

  The founders of Woman’s Hospital… Barbara Ehrenreich and Diedre English, For Her Own Good, pp. 123–24.

  A report from the American Phamaceutical… David Courtwright, Dark Paradise: A History of Opiate Addiction in America, p. 51.

  Somewhere between 200,000… David Musto, The American Disease, pp. 16, 50–51, 253–54.

  A traveler who spent time… Nathaniel Philbrick, In the Heart of the Sea, p. 16.

  Laudanum, an opium… Clinton, The Plantation Mistress, p. 70.

  In 1897, the Sears… James Inciardi, The War on Drugs, pp. 5–6.

  “No name is signed…” H. Wayne Morgan, Drugs in America, p. 101.

  “Young women cannot go…” Dick Griffin, “Opium Addiction in Chicago,” Chicago History (Summer 1977), p. 108.

  A North Carolina doctor… Morgan, p. 27.

  The most famous was Lydia Pinkham’s…Female Complaints by Sarah Stage is a fascinating book about both the Pinkhams and the patent medicine industry.

  “I do wish…” Stage, p. 126.

  Colonel Hoestetters… Maud Banfield, “About Patent Medicine,” Ladies’ Home Journal (May 1903), p. 26.

  “THAT SO LITTLE SHOULD BE SAID ABOUT THEM

  SURPRISES ME FOR THEY ARE EVERYWHERE”

  The post–Civil War… Woloch, pp. 279–80.

  “If only you were here…” Cazden, p. 75.

  “The loves of women…” Woloch, p. 281.

  CHAPTER 12: IMMIGRANTS

  Tons of books are available on the immigrant experience, and this is one part of American history where women’s voices are well represented. The two books to which this section is particularly indebted are Elizabeth Ewan’s Immigrant Women in the Land of Dollars and Christine Stansell’s wonderful City of Women.

  “AS YOU SEE, I AM NOT STAYING FAR BEHIND”

  “They say in this country…” Peiss, Cheap Amusements, p. 63.

  “In the old country…” Ewan, p. 198.

  Rose Cohen: Cohen, Out of the Shadow, pp. 153–54.

  Marie Prisland…Immigrant Women, Maxine Schwartz Seller, ed., p. 1.

  Although some social workers… Ewan, p. 126.

  Two of the few who did…Rose Cohen published her memoir: Out of the Shadow: A Russian Jewish Girlhood on the Lower East Side. Rosa Cavalleri’s story was recorded by settlement house worker Maria Hall Ets: Rosa: The Life of an Italian Immigrant.

  “When they learned…” Roger Daniels, Coming to America, p. 274.

  The terrors and heartbreak… Judy Yung, Unb
ound Feet, pp. 63–66.

  “AMERICA IS A WOMAN’S COUNTRY”

  This chapter makes use of another one of those great Everyday Life books, Thomas Schlereth’s Victorian America: Transformations of Everyday Life.

  The Irish were the only… Daniels, p. 225.

  Overall, one in three… Schlereth, p. 11.

  Ukrainian men told an interviewer… Ewan, p. 101.

  An Italian immigrant… Ewan, p. 65.

  A social worker described… Ewan, pp. 103–4.

  Jane Addams surveyed… Addams, Twenty Years at Hull-House, p. 164.

  Handling the finances… For more about this point, see Stansell’s City of Women.

  The classic first home… Anyone who happens to be in New York City and wants to see how immigrants lived should visit the Tenement Museum on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

  “Water…to my mother…” Ewan, pp. 65–66.

  Men and women regularly fell… Doris Weatherford, Foreign and Female, p. 148.

  One tenement described by… Fon Boardman, America and the Gilded Age, pp. 107–9.

  “It was nothing unusual…” Cohen, p. 292.

  “A kind of obligation…” Peiss, Cheap Amusements, p. 21.

  “The walls are hung…” Schlereth, p. 120.

  “I WORKED AND ROCKED THE BABY WITH MY FEET”

  “The boss said that a woman…” Rose Laub Coser, et al., Women of Courage: Jewish and Italian Immigrant Women in New York, p. 110.

  That allowed them to stay… Stansell, City of Women, p. 114.

  “I used to cry…” Coser et al., p. 102.

  Somewhere between 25 and 50 percent… Evans, Born for Liberty, p. 131.

  But although the public… Stansell, City of Women, p. 48.

  “Those swill boxes…” Ets, pp. 222–25.

  Lillian Wald… Wald, The House on Henry Street, pp. 40–41.

  “SURE, SIX DAYS IS ENOUGH TO WORK”

  The sections in this book about the Irish are based on Hasia Diner’s fascinating Erin’s Daughters in America; unless otherwise noted, the information about domestic service comes from another great book, Faye Dudden’s Serving Women.

  The anonymous author of… Dudden, p. 112.

  The live-in domestics’ workweek… Woloch, p. 238.

  “Especially is objection…” Peiss, Cheap Amusements, p. 40.

  Lucy Salmon… Schlereth, pp. 73–74

  A social service investigator… Sarah Deutsch, Women and the City: Gender, Space and Power in Boston, 1870–1940, p. 59.

  “I am getting along splendid…” Diner, p. 71.

  By midcentury, 74 percent… Stansell, City of Women, p. 156.

  Edwin Godkin… Diner, p. 88.

  In the book Plain Talk … Dudden, pp. 180–81.

  The Irish World examined… Diner, p. 84.

  In the South before… Daniels, p. 137.

  Irish women often found… See Diner, chapter 5.

  Second-generation Irish… Schlereth, pp. 73–74.

  “I DIDN’T GO NOPLACE”

  “I didn’t go noplace…” Coser, p. 41.

  Jane Addams reported… Addams, p. 234.

  Rosa Cavalleri… Ets, p. 222.

  One member of Addams’s… Addams, pp. 67–68.

  Addams was struck… Addams, pp. 72–73.

  “One girl told me…” Weatherford, Foreign and Female, p. 84.

  In New York, some tried… Ewan, pp. 149–50.

  “WELL, WHAT DID YOU THINK OF THAT YOUNG MAN?”

  When Rose Cohen… R. Cohen, pp. 199–207.

  Rose Cohen said… R. Cohen, p. 85.

  When she grew up… R. Cohen, p. 297.

  Hester Vaughn… Goldsmith, pp. 172–73.

  Emma Goldman… Ryan, Womanhood in America, p. 216.

  One Jewish woman… Seller, ed., p. 132.

  Abortions, which were illegal… Weatherford, Foreign and Female, p. 11.

  In 1853, the Tribune estimated… Stansell, City of Women, p. 111.

  Jane Addams said the first… Addams, p. 112.

  A third of all babies… Ewan, p. 137.

  Jane Addams reported bitterly… Addams, p. 250.

  In 1908, doctors swooped…Ewan, p. 143.

  Addams recalled a devoted…Addams, p. 116.

  “I WANTED A NEW THING—HAPPINESS”

  “I wanted a new thing…” Ewan, p. 195.

  “Oh my God…” Ewan, p. 215.

  “The Negro race…” D’Emilio and Freedman, p. 196.

  “The town is dance mad”… Ewan, p. 209.

  “The pimps…” Michael Gold, Jews Without Money, p. 33.

  Maureen Connelly… Peiss, Cheap Amusements, p. 61.

  “It was quite wonderful…” Peiss, Cheap Amusements, pp. 43–44.

  In 1909, the International Ladies… Ryan, Womanhood in America, p. 223.

  “I HAVE IT LIKE HEAVEN”

  “We liked moving…” R. Cohen, p. 186.

  But her success… Thomas Dublin in the introduction to Cohen’s Out of the Shadow, p. xv.

  “They wouldn’t dare…” Ets, p. 254.

  CHAPTER 13: TURN OF THE CENTURY

  “TO DEMONSTRATE PUBLICLY THAT WOMEN HAVE LEGS”

  In 1895… Frances Willard, How I Learned to Ride the Bicycle, pp. 19, 51.

  Lillian Russell began pedaling… Albert Auster, Actresses and Suffragists, p. 108.

  Susan B. Anthony enthused… Lisa Larabee in Willard, pp. 84–90.

  “A few years ago…” Dulles, p. 267.

  Lillian Russell confided… Auster, p. 108.

  Life noted approvingly… Patricia Marks, Bicycles, Bangs and Bloomers, p. 193.

  The Boston Rescue League… Somers, pp. 142–43.

  “AGGRESSIVE AS BECAME THEIR SEX”

  This section marks the first reference to two books I really enjoyed, Naomi Braun Rosenthal’s very short but very valuable Spinster Tales and Womanly Possibilities, and Sandra Adickes’s To Be Young Was Very Heaven.

  Madame Yale… Peiss, Hope in a Jar, pp. 85–87.

  In 1896, Life published… Marks, pp. 162–63.

  Ladies’ Home Journal, which teetered… Rosenthal, pp. 19–30.

  The heroine of the Grace Harlow series… Gwen Athene Tarbox, The Clubwomen’s Daughters, pp. 67–70.

  Stanton, addressing the men… Geoffrey Ward, Not for Ourselves Alone, p. 7.

  A middle-aged Annie Oakley… Glenda Riley, The Life and Legacy of Annie Oakley, p. 142.

  Frances Willard said… Willard, p. 75.

  “Almost the best…” Adickes, pp. 72–73.

  Rose Pastor… Adickes, pp. 61–62.

  Alva Belmont: Christopher Lasch has a short biography of Mrs. Belmont in Notable American Women, James and James, eds., pp. 126–28. The story about the costume ball is in Alex Gregory’s Families of Fortune in the Gilded Age, p. 194.

  the United States had the highest… Schlereth, p. 281.

  Denver would soon… Lynn Dumeril, Modern Temper, p. 130.

  “LESS ABOUT SOUL AND MORE ABOUT PIMPLES”

  The New York Herald admired… Banner, p. 157.

  Lillian Russell… Albert Auster, Actresses and Suffragists, p. 96.

  “WHENEVER SHE WAS DISTURBED OR DEPRESSED

  SHE WOULD MOVE THE FURNITURE”

  Anyone who wants to get acquainted with Jane Addams should start with her own Twenty Years at Hull-House. The two biographies I’ve relied most on are American Heroine by Allen Davis, and the very readable A Useful Woman by Gioia Diliberto.

  “fashionable fad”… Diliberto, p. 146.

  “Whenever she was disturbed…” Diliberto, p. 173.

  Thanks to her example… Evans, Born for Liberty, p. 148.

  “I FOUGHT THE RATS, INSIDE AND OUT”

  This section is based on Elliott Gorn’s very thorough biography, Mother Jones.

  In 1930… Dorothy Brown, Setting a Course: American Women in the 1920s, p. 90.

  “I sat alone…” Gorn, p. 41.

  “She had a
complete…” Gorn, p. 74.

  Elizabeth Gurley Flynn… Gorn, p. 143.

  “I have been in jail…” Gorn, p. 178.

  “I had sewer rats…” Gorn, p. 210.

  Mother Jones organized… Gorn, p. 134.

  In 1897, the National Labor Tribune declared… Gorn, p. 119.

  “I AM NOW SURROUNDED BY ALL MY DREAMS COME TRUE”

  My information on Ida Tarbell comes from Katherine Brady’s Ida Tarbell: Portrait of a Muckraker. Madame C. J. Walker’s great-great-granddaughter, A’Lelia Bundles, has written a very interesting biography, On Her Own Ground, on which much of this section is based.

  “She could mobilize…” Brady, p. 95.

  “Miss Ida Tarbell…” Brady, p. 150.

  Harriet Hubbard Ayer… Peiss, Hope in a Jar, pp. 64–71.

  “I had a dream…” Bundles, p. 277.

  “TELL ME, PRETTY MAIDEN

  ARE THERE MORE AT HOME LIKE YOU?”

  Floradora Girls: Banner, pp. 181–82.

  Dr. Edward Clarke… Solomon, p. 56.

  Nevertheless, a decade later… Evans, Born for Liberty, p. 147.

  The idea of higher education… Rosenthal, p. 46.

  By 1910…Woloch, p. 281.

  Nearly half of all… Rosenthal, pp. 73–74.

  Florence Kelley remembered… A. Davis, p. 12.

  When the University of Chicago… Woloch, p. 288.

  The year the University of Kansas… Jeffrey, Frontier Women, pp. 233–34.

  “SMASHED”

  The Cosmopolitan reported… Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, Alma Mater, pp. 162–63.

  One former Vassar student… Tarbox, p. 63.

  While Jane Addams… Diliberto, p. 243.

  Smith, the daughter… Diliberto, p. 191.

  “RACE SUICIDE”

  When Jane Addams was asked… Diliberto, p. 244.

  Nearly half… Evans, Born for Liberty, p. 147.

  It was the golden age… Rosenthal, pp. 48–50.

  “If Americans of the old stock…” Ehrenreich and English, p. 135.

  Ladies’ Home Journal, which never…Rosenthal, p. 68.

  “LIFE IS TOO SHORT TO SPEND IT DIGESTING PORK”

  A great deal of the information in this section comes from one of my favorite books, Laura Shapiro’s Perfection Salad.

  “Perhaps the fact…” Janet Wilson James’s profile in Notable American Women, James and James, eds., p. 143.

  Richards had opposed… Ehrenreich and English, p. 151.

  Boiling a potato… Shapiro, p. 40.

  By 1914… Shapiro, p. 175.

  “To keep the world clean…” Ehrenreich and English, pp. 158–59.