Feminist activism laid the basis for women’s suffrage. As for previous generations of Americans—rich and poor, black and white—wartime service secured it.View Rubric
Before reading this, I wasn't aware that the war is what really secured suffrage for so many people.
The Hello Girls were denied the veterans’ bonuses, victory medals, honorable discharges, and flags on their coffins granted to female sailors and Marines who had never left the United States.
It isn't nice how discriminated against these women were during and after the war when they were putting in a large amount of effort.
At the actual switchboards below, Grace Banker stayed on duty 21 hours.
The average time most of us are awake is about sixteen hours, so this shows dedication.
unt was aware that she and other operators could be among the casualties
These operators lives were in danger although they were not directly fighting. Why aren't they given more credit?
Without forewarning, the phone rang
This test interested me, because today we have interviews and tests that we prepare for and do not occur without warning.
Before making the final cut, operators were summoned to six training centers (New York City, Scranton, Trenton, Chicago, San Francisco, and Lowell) to pass language tests, medical exams, and telephone training.33
These operators are not taught about in schools, yet they went through a large amount of training in order to get this job.
The water remained muddy, however. No one gave the operators contracts to sign. And, as General George Squier later explained his understanding, if the operators were like nurses, then they “served by appointment and not by enlistment,” but nonetheless as part of the regular Army.
Operators not signing contracts is risky, because none of their agreements are in writing.
Because of sex-segregation in telecommunications, women possessed skillsets men generally did not
Women and men were taught differently, and so women were more informed about the subject. So why were men still against women working?
Most possessed a limited French vocabulary and struggled to pronounce the few words they knew over crackly wires.
It is also so much easier now to translate via Google Translate and other language apps. Back then, people had to find a physical human to translate.
emales controlled their emotions better than males—and had stronger nerves: “Experience, almost without exception, has come to show the great superiority of female telephone operators.”
I think it is funny that people realized how competent females are once they hired them in the work place.
“Would you believe it? They actually recognized my voice in London before I told them who I was!”13 If the United States was going to field its armies effectively, it needed experts to handle this lethal—as well as lifesaving—technology.
This shows how technologically advanced the United States was, as our phones were better than other countries around the world.
Women would not be recruited for the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) if they merely performed as well as men. They would have to perform much better. They would have to do something men could not.
It is odd that women were expected to perform better than men if this was supposed to be a "mens job only."
They and the yeomanettes were the first women admitted to full military rank by the United States.
Again, I did not know the different branches of our military had differing rules.
The Navy began featuring women in recruitment drives.
I was not aware how much more progressive the Navy was than the Army, I thought they would have most of the same rules.
But another genre emerged, too: confident uniformed women embracing military service.
I remember learning about propaganda in school and how it encouraged all people to join the war.
Female yeomen earned $28.75 per month, the same as men.
I was not aware that females made as much as men, this surprised me because to this day there is a wage gap between men and women.
the United States became the world’s first modern nation to enlist females, for jobs that ranged from typing to accounting to telephone operating.
This was a good move for The US, as they needed the help and women are just as smart as men and are able to do these tasks.
division commanders should not “employ women in any capacity in the National Army cantonment and National Guard camps with the exception of female nurses attached to hospitals.”5 Despite labor shortages, the War Department disapproved all requests to utilize women. Females simply did not belong in the Army, Baker believed.
It is crazy how against women people once were. If women want to join the army, they should be able to. It is especially odd that they would not even allow women to do jobs for the Nation that did not involve actual fighting .
Both operators and nurses accepted the harshest responsibility of democracy, however: placing one’s life in danger when necessary to defend the citizen-owned republic.
This is something that was not discussed when I learned about wars in school, women are often overlooked in their roles in the war, which is interesting considering it is many years later.
The Signal Corps did not fire cannons, sink submarines, or bayonet invaders. Their job was to speed messages
This emphasizes how important media really is, as before we had instant calling and texting, we had to find other ways to spread information and methods quickly.
This war could not have been fought, either by the other nations engaged or by America, if it had not been for the services of the women,—services rendered in every sphere,
This is true. The country expected women to help fight for it when they were not citizens. Therefore, making them citizens was necessary as they had a large contribution to the protection and maintenance of The USA.
Historians have filled bookshelves with marvelous accounts of the women’s movement.
It's nice that our suffrage as well as that of other minorities is documented. This way us future generations get to see how far our ancestors have come.
Other countries had already expanded the franchise. “Are we alone to refuse to learn the lesson?”, the president asked the recalcitrant Senate.
The Senate still was not for this, which I did not know.
But how could it lead the free world if it was behind everyone else? Once entangled with foreign policy, women’s suffrage suddenly became necessary, not discretionary.
The United States finally made women's suffrage a priority when it was convenient for them rather than when women first started fighting for it. At least they realized that a country where its citizens were not equal was not a country that could lead the world.
Accustomed to congratulating itself as the vanguard of liberal democracy, the United States brought up the rear.
America claims to be perfect and all inclusive, yet we were not one of the first nations to empower women.
The conflict that began in 1914 altered expectations about citizenship worldwide. Not only did the Russian, Ottoman, and German Empires fragment into a dozen new nations, but cracks also ran under the British, French, and Dutch Empires as diverse peoples claimed a right to popular sovereignty
We often learn about the history of America, but we do not learn about the history of other countries as in depth. It's interesting that minorities in various countries fought for suffrage at the same time. This is likely what influenced more groups to do so.
Yet their efforts had been ongoing for decades.
It's crazy that women are 50% of our population, yet we did not have the same rights that men do. How did this start?
Throughout the nation’s history, soldiering has established qualifications for full citizenship.
It's odd that the nation was once so desperate for soldiers, yet they were so specific about their criteria.
E-mail has the ability to replace formal impersonal greetings (cards) with more personal, direct computer mediated greetings.
Today texting seems to have taken over email.
or the development of the habit of instantaneous communication, which has come to represent more than just the ability to communicate (for example, it represents security, sociability).
Instantaneous communication is now a way of life, as it is available wherever we go in America. For example, I just did my taxes online, which is different than my grandpa who does it on paper. Electronic secure documents are becoming more and more common,
‘that our Great Maker is preparing the world in His own good time to become one nation, speaking, one language, and when armies and navies will no longer be required.’“
I feel that the whole world will never be one country and our different cultures make us all unique.
Use of Morse Code as a standardized structure for the language of telegraphic dispatches meant that telegrams, in one sense, were a classless language.
Does this mean morse code is the same for all classes? I was not aware language varied so much between different classes.
Coates (1976) Additionally, the word telegraph came to be associated with anything speedy.
It's funny that telegraph was associated with fast, because today it is thought of as old and slow.
America was enthralled by and romanticized the use of the telegraph. Telegraph tales involving heartfelt and sometimes unusual sentiments permeated the literature of the late 1800’s.
Even today old messages are romanticized, for example, there are many movies about men in war and women who write romantic letters to them.
Language and literature are both reflective of a society’s norms and values, and will yield a clue as to how deeply embedded a new technology has become.
How does literature differ in other countries? Also, language does differ in other societies as different words are common, different slang, and many countries are more or less formal than us. It is interesting that literature also impacts that.
This standardization of “personal” greetings can be seen as one additional step in the process of homogenization.
It's interesting that these were pushehd to be less formal and moved towards family and friend casual communication. It's also nice that Western Union made stamps for this.
recognize telegrams as correct for all types of formal, as well as informal correspondence.”
Telegrams were probably a nice change for people, because they did not always need to be so highly formal when written.
Both technologies can make a patient’s medical history instantly available, as well as allow for comprehensive consultation through shared databases and communication networks.
I never realized how important consulting doctors from far away in medical care. Today, doctors contact people instantly such as pharmacies and other doctors. I never thought about what medical care might look like without this ability.
“One of the most curious applications of the telegraph is its use in surgery to discover a bullet would
I was not aware that the telegraph was so important in medical care, and this exemplifies how important technology really is to helping our society.
“What had once been considered an impractical invention the Government had refused to buy for $100,000.00, had by 1889, in private hands, become indispensable to social and economic life.”
I'm surprised that the Government did not think this was practical, because today almost everyone in America has a phone. Most of us cannot imagine life without phones, and they are important for both our home and work lives.
Around the turn of the century, the availability of telephones in homes as well as businesses meant that people became more accessible day and night.
It's crazy to think that there was a time where people did not carry phones on them. Today, we access people whenever we want, and can deliver messages to them instantly by texting. It is crazy that the telephone was the first introduction of this.
The ability to schedule more precisely meant “time”, in a sense, was more in control, dictating people’s actions, rather than people dictating action
Time today dictates almost everything we do. We work for a certain timeframe rather than work until our tasks are done. We need to get places on time to not miss things. And we look at how long movies and shows are when we are going to watch them.
However, Western Union managed to commodify time by gaining revenue from the rental of self-winding, synchronized clocks, and regulating these by hourly signals of time correction
This reminded me that winding clocks was also a thing. This was still present not long ago, as when I was a kid we had a grandfather clock that my dad used to wind when it was wrong.
However, the application of telegraphic technology to time had the effect of standardizing time, making it subject to more precise management
How did people get to work on time in this time period? I rarely got to learn about what life was like before standard time, and it is interesting to learn how the pace of life was slower before it.
American society is familiar with the ideas of a “work week” and a “school year”1, both of which are organizing concepts for daily life. However, these same ideas would be essentially meaningless to the primitive Bushmen of Africa as they have no relationship to the circumstances under which they live.
I never thought about how time concepts are different in other societies. It's something countries do differently and we do not think much about how other countries perceive time. Another example that I found out is that in Australia, Christmas is during the summer.
which telegraphy affected the social fabric of American society.
I think this is interesting because when you think about it telegraphs really did influence our society. No one today uses telegraphs, yet we all know what they are.
provides a real grasp of how the world works
History shows us how to see the world through our nations eyes as well as other countries eyes.
students of history acquire, by studying different phases of the past and different societies in the past, a broad perspective that gives them the range and flexibility required in many work situations.
This is true. Students who intensely study history are good at analyzing events from different perspectives and by relating past to future. History is likely used in some way in every profession.
Experience in assessing past examples of change is vital to understanding change in society today—it's an essential skill in what we are regularly told is our "ever-changing world."
In order for our world to modernize and develop, we need change. Why are people so scared of change?
The study of history builds experience in dealing with and assessing various kinds of evidence—the sorts of evidence historians use in shaping the most accurate pictures of the past that they can
Assessing evidence is a skill that students gain from history, because video was not invented too long ago. Therefore, most events in history have not been video taped and documented like todays world is. This means today we must use the evidence we do have and analyze it and infer.
Further, studying history helps us understand how recent, current, and prospective changes that affect the lives of citizens are emerging or may emerge and what causes are involved.
Studying history teaches us our nations general culture, which is good to learn so that we all have a common understanding of how our society functions. How does history teach children citizenship from such an early age?
Histories that tell the national story, emphasizing distinctive features of the national experience, are meant to drive home an understanding of national values and a commitment to national loyalty.
Histories of many countries, including our country, focus on "national values" and eliminate minorities of the past since we do not always have much information on them. In school when I was younger I learned that many slaves did not get official names or papers, so their history is lost. The national loyalty taught us to be loyal to only white men such as George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. We did not learn nearly as much about black or women leaders making it only what the nation values.
the great men and women of history who successfully worked through moral dilemmas, but also of more ordinary people who provide lessons in courage, diligence, or constructive protest.
History teaches us trial and error. Many people of the past did not have moral standards that we have today, and we need to learn why those morals are wrong and why we are held to a higher standard because of it.
The past causes the present, and so the future.
Everything that happens is due to cause and effect, cause and effect is endless. For example, Benjamin Franklin invented electricity. Without that invention we might be living in a much less advanced world even many years later.
and people need to have some sense of how societies function simply to run their own lives.
This is true, we learn to fun our lives by the people before us. And if we do not use history we could lose track of how societies function, making society a chaotic mess.
An exclusive reliance on current data would needlessly handicap our efforts. How can we evaluate war if the nation is at peace—unless we use historical materials?
This is extremely important. For example, if we were to have another pandemic in the future, scientists could use the Covid-19 pandemic data and mistakes we made to make sure that we do not repeat the same mistakes. However, if future generations of scientists do not study the pandemic and its mistakes, then we will not be able to evaluate a future pandemic without knowledge of Covid.
Unfortunately, this use can encourage mindless memorization—a real but not very appealing aspect of the discipline. History should be studied because it is essential to individuals and to society, and because it harbors beauty
I never thought about this but it's very true. Memorizing historical facts does not necessarily mean someone knows history. We should be able to discuss history in detail, yet most of us only know bits and pieces that we have memorized over time, likely for tests of some sort.
History is in fact very useful, actually indispensable, but the products of historical study are less tangible, sometimes less immediate, than those that stem from some other disciplines.
This makes sense, because many people need to learn their immediate profession and focus on that rather than history. However, history is very important to learn so that we can be aware of our ancestors and the worlds' past. Not much history is required in college either, but people are required to take other classes relating to their professions. This makes history seem less immediate and therefore less important to the curriculum. However, this should not be the case. Why isn't more history required?
its advocates must explain why it is worth attention
History is worth attention because if we do not learn what happened in the past we are doomed to repeat its mistakes. We also need to learn different types of history in order to learn about different historical subjects.
And why urge many students to study even more history than they are required to?
I think people in society are urged to learn as much about history as possible because of its depth and importance. In school, we cannot possibly learn everything that has happened in history. Also, schools in different areas are often biased so students should study history on their own in order to get knowledge about groups that might not be represented in their schools curriculum.