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U.S. History 1877-Present Videos 173 videos

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U.S. History 1877-Present 5.3 The Temperance Movement 124 Views


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Description:

Besides suffrage, one of the biggest goals of the women’s movement was to get rid of alcohol. Yeah...back then, people knew how to have fun without ending the evening face-down in a ditch.

Language:
English Language

Transcript

00:04

Beside suffrage one of the biggest goals of the women's [Women protesting]

00:07

movement was getting rid of alcohol this was called the temperance movement what

00:13

beef did some women have with hooch well certainly people might have thought it [Woman throws beef at hooch]

00:16

was because the ladies were anti fun but a big factor was that alcohol was a

00:21

major contributor to domestic abuse women and children were being regularly

00:25

victimized beaten or even killed by drunken husbands and fathers and a lot [Man attempts to hit woman]

00:30

of times and then totally got away with this is use without any consequences

00:34

some ask where men really get into that drunk all the time well the short answer [Man pouring alcohol into mouth]

00:39

is yes oh here's the long version Oh most men

00:43

who worked in factories received their pay each week not at work not from the

00:48

boss but at their local bar from the bartender yes the factory owners sent

00:54

the money there on purpose so that the men would spend most of their weeks pay [Boss hands money to bartender]

00:59

on beer and hard liquor this prevented them from saving enough money to move up

01:04

from factory work yeah talk about job security well here's another fun fact

01:08

bars also doubled as polling stations during election then would vote at the

01:13

bar and then get lasted for a while you know the other way around well this was [Man drinking at the bar]

01:18

one reason some men gave from not allowing women to vote the bars were

01:22

full of dangerous drunk and angry men so how could women possibly go inside and [Man screams and chases woman]

01:27

vote yeah there may be some flaws in that rationale bars were also set up

01:32

outside the gate to the factories so men stop there before they went home each

01:36

night while this meant that guys spent a lot of time drinking and often came home [Man drinking at the bar]

01:40

drunk and violent at the time if a man beat his wife or children or even killed

01:45

them when he was drunk he was not charged with any crime if four people [Man stood beside police officer]

01:51

were not making this up this is real the police would say well the man was drunk

01:55

he didn't know what he was doing you can't put him in jail for that right and

02:01

which makes us wonder if maybe the police force was drunk when they came up [Police man drinking alcohol in court]

02:04

with that rule well not only did many women fear for their health safety and

02:09

lives because of drunken then some families experienced extreme

02:13

poverty in part because men spent their cash on boots oh by the 1870s women that [Woman opens cabinet to I.O.U]

02:18

had enough they still weren't allowed to vote which was the only way to change

02:21

the laws that allowed drunken men to kill them without any consequences so

02:26

ladies went with the only really open to them to ban alcohol completely women did [Women marching to Ban Alcohol street]

02:32

this very cleverly by calling on the very idea of separate spheres that men

02:37

use to keep them powerless the innocently asked how can we fulfill our

02:42

god-given role as mothers and caretakers of the home if we and our children are

02:48

being gene and killed how can we care for our families if we have no money [Mother and son crying and father appears with bottles of beer]

02:52

because our husbands spend it all on alcohol she gets questioned yet if men

02:57

abandoned their god-given role as protectors of women and children then

03:00

women must act to protect society by banning alcohol well God demands that we

03:06

the women of America act to save our country and our own delicate female [Woman slaps a bottle of beer]

03:10

honor right well the women's Christian Temperance Union was founded in 1873 in

03:15

Ohio and chapters spread across America women did incredibly brave freedom of

03:20

temperance they prayed in front of bars where men assaulted them they destroyed [Women praying at a bar and man hits them with foam hammer]

03:25

barrels of alcohol and went to jail for it they gave public speeches they

03:29

marched they came forward and talked about their experiences of being beaten

03:32

by their drunken husband and they talked about the mothers children sisters and

03:37

friends they'd lost as well they weren't taken so seriously by working men but

03:42

the WCTU appealed to upper-class Protestant men who saw drunkenness as a

03:47

dirty low-class foreign Catholic kind of problem ruining manliness in America

03:52

while eventually the 18th amendment brought in the era of prohibition in [18th amendment appears]

03:55

which all alcohol was banned in the u.s. the temperance movement had ridden its

04:00

wave of girl power to success unfortunately for the temperate ladies [Woman surfing]

04:04

prohibition didn't stick and led to a heap of other problems like an explosion

04:08

in organized crime but hey at least we got a whole lot of [Man firing a gun]

04:12

great gangster movies out of it right so that's a plus [Woman watching a gangster movie]

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