8 America Comes of Age Women and Voting One movement that would have a major impact on life and politics in the 1900s was the women’s suffrage or the movement to obtain the right to vote for women Groups pushing for the right of all women in the United States to vote formed in the previous century Until the 1890s prominent women such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton led them She believed that educated women would best promote women’s influence in public life Other women however believed that women’s rights were much broader than simply the right to vote One of these was Harriet Stanton Blatch Cady Stanton’s own daughter Blatch wanted the fight for women’s rights to touch on economic issues as well She believed that women should receive equal pay to men for their work and that suffrage would be valuable because it would give all women influence in society There was always a division in the suffrage movement between middle and upper-class women on the one hand and poor working women on the other By 1912 nine states in the West had granted women the right to vote These modest successes pushed women to press for a constitutional amendment granting all women the right to vote In the years after 1912 women picketed and protested and advertised their cause in newspapers and magazines The final victory the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1919 came about largely because of the heroic work of American women from 1917 to 1918 during World War I Legislators realized that they could no longer deny women their basic right to vote after having served as nurses medical volunteers and factory workers during the conflict The first group of suffrage supporters take part in a political campaign in 1914
In addition certain civil liberties were restricted during the conflict For example an arrest for treason was liable for anyone attacking such institutions as the draft This was a clear violation of the right of free speech The Roaring Twenties When the war ended in 1918 the American people wanted nothing more than to return to their prewar happiness During the election year of 1920 the Republican presidential candidate Warren Harding called for a return to normalcy meaning the way things had been But the 1920s would not be a return to the good old days they would be a period of dramatic social change American families acquired radios and automobiles on a wide scale Women’s skirts became shorter a dramatic change from the floor length dresses common throughout all of American history A period known as Prohibition made the sale of alcohol illegal throughout the nation during the 1920s Liquor was available in underground saloons called speakeasies They received this name because a secret code word was required to gain admittance Very few people paid any attention to the law While these and other striking changes were occurring in society during the 1920s a series of bland and relatively weak presidents sat in the White House America Comes of Age 9 Warren Harding died in office in 1923 and Calvin Coolidge became his successor He was a man who said and did little The action seemed to be not in the White House but in the private sectors of business and entertainment The presidency for the time being would play a smaller role in American life World War 1 brought great changes to the lives of women many worked outside the home for the first time Words to Know normalcy NOR-muhl-see A term coined by Warren Harding in 1920 and meaning the state of being normal Although grammatically incorrect at the time it has since become a recognized word in the English language
10 William H Taft William H Taft William H Tati Born September 15 1857 Cincinnati OH William Howard Taft began his service in government when he was 24 years old By the time he was in his late forties he was a member of President Theodore Roosevelt's Cabinet and a close personal friend of the president's He was such a trusted friend to Roosevelt that the president handpicked Taft to be his successor But Taft's term as president was an unhappy one It was marked by an end to his friendship with Roosevelt the splitting of his political party and the overwhelming rejection by American voters in his bid for reelection in 1912 In 1921 eight years after leaving the White House Taft achieved the position he had always really wanted that of chief justice of the United States Supreme Court William Howard Taft thus became the only person to hold both the highest office in the executive branch and the highest office in the judicial branch Ohio Cincinnati Term March 4 1909 March 4 1913 Party Republican First Lady Helen Herron Taft Vice President James S Sherman Died March 8 1930 Washington D C Vice President James S Sherman
Good Times William H Taft 27th President of the United States
