Knotek Samantha 2/15/11 Interpretations Chapter 6 Kathryn Sklar bases her essay off the white middle-class activists and their power in America. The goal of her essay was to explain the power that the women had and how their efforts created social change in America. Women became crucial to the efforts of change when they formed coalitions with men to support changes. The womens role changed; they know longer took the viewpoints of their families- they formed their own political opinion and action plans. The women together formed a new social- science organization; they developed sociology and they used social work as a way to make reform in the nation. There was also the development of the social-settlement movement which was when women chose to live in working-class immigrant neighborhoods in order to help others and grow with their religious and moral values. Women no longer rushed into marriage because of this movement; after college women would live in these settlement houses and engulf their lives in community service for a few years. When the women joined forces with the men, there was a great success. With the womens grass-roots activism and the mens political power, there was always success in reform. Middle class women changed public policy and public norms. They did this in the male dominated society and they broke the barriers for women of the time. Daniel T. Rogers bases his essay off of by explaining the relationship between American and European politics, the Old World versus the New World. America and its economic standpoint was no longer linked to Europes; they had no connection anymore. This is due to the successes of the U.S. and the difficulties that Europe was having at this time. Europe, especially Britain, was manufacturing coal in their factories at a successful rate. Britains output of coal was untouched by any other country, until America caught on. America took Europes ideals on trade and production and revolutionized it. The growth of big cities around the world caused for the huge population rise in the cities. This led to housing famine, issues, health and transportation problems. All of these changes throughout the world caused the outpouring of new goods as well as more opportunities. But with these opportunities came competition among the politicians. There was competition in each political party; every politician was in a
competition of power and popularity. This led to the transformation of social politics through the North Atlantic economy. There was legislation passed from one country to the next that were filled with acts of rivalry, each country wanted to get ahead. One method of doing this was to send in spies to the countries. There would be people who would take jobs in other countries when they were really feeding their own country the information they gained. America, a new developing country, looked at these countries and formed its own dilemmas of politics and social ideals. These two articles were completely different; each author had their own perspective on the progressive era. The background of Sklar was from the womens perspective while Rogers wrote about the American and European politics. There really isnt a connection between these two articles that I could find. They each have completely different point of views and developed their papers in different ways. I think that Sklars article is easier to follow and is filled with information that most people would know about. Whereas, Rogers article was more informative and detailed and it was filled with information that most people would know about. I learned more information about both different perspectives from reading each of these essays. From Sklars essay I learned more about the womens ideals and how they caused change throughout this time period. I didnt know that the middle-class men and women would work together to bring about such a change. I thought that all of the change that occurred was separate. From Rogers article I learned information on the social politics. I really did now know any of this information before reading it, or I did not understand it properly. His essay cleared a lot of information up.