Lecture 4 + 5 – Industrial Revolution

Urbanization
 During this time, rural areas were becoming urban and factories were merging into city
centers
- People migrated from the country side to cities
 What kind of problems does this cause?
- Poverty, overcrowding, disease, slums, addiction, crime
 Politicians only cared about building roads and bridges

Middle-class Reformers:
 Clergy, medical professionals, social workers, people who wanted to elevate the quality
of life
 Even though well-intentioned, they had a white-class arrogance
- “They knew how to solve all the problems”
 Believed the cause of problems affecting the cities were working class people
- Working class and immigrants were bottom of the ladder
 Everyone (who wasn’t middle class, white or Christian) were inferior

Eugenics Movement
 Belief that people who would survive the Industrial Revolution, poverty and disease
were meant to survive
- Survival of the fittest
- People who were sick were considered undesirable people

Women Volunteers
 Women tried to solve problems of society through legislation, raising charitable funds
and beautifying the city (called beautification)
- If the environment was beautiful, it would make people want to behave in a socially
acceptable way
- Did they want to improve urban life?
o Social reformers did good work, but they still had a middle-class arrogance

During this time, there were 3 social evils social middle class reformers were concerned with:
obscenity and censorship, prostitution and venereal disease and eugenics and reproduction

Obscenity and Censorship

 During the 19th century, there was concern surrounding sexually explicit concepts and
language and the way it got used publically
 Victorians believed this promoted lustiness, deviant behaviour, premarital sex and a
corrupt society
 Middle class reformers wanted to control this content
 Chief advocate for this movement was Anthony Comstock
 - Lived from 1844-1915
- Was a US postal inspector
- He had access to mail and he noticed a lot of people were sending sexual explicit
material
o Information pamphlets about birth control (condoms, withdrawal,
abstinence), abortion and venereal disease
o Saw this as pornographic and that required censorship of some kind
 Comstock Act
- Also, called the Post Office Act
- Piece of legislation from 1873
- Prohibited individuals from sending obscene, lude or lascivious material
- Could be arrested or fined
- Act extended further to cover the overall distribution or sale of material in a store,
on the street or in your home
 Anthony Comstock became so powerful
- State gave him police powers
o He carried a gun and couple prosecute anyone at his discretion
o He was responsible for 4000 arrests
- Destroyed 4 million pictures
o 15 tonnes of books
 He became frantic
- Was obsessed with arresting and burning anything he thought was pornographic
 Obscene was defined in expansive terms by Comstock
- Even prescriptive literature written years ago would be burned
- Anatomy textbooks were burned because they had pictures of naked people
 Middle-class reformers supported him
- Believed censorship and confiscation should be the order of the day and any open
and honest discussion about the body and sexuality was bad
 Comstock died in 1915, but his influence lived on
 Who defied Comstock?
- Socialists, anarchists and feminists
- Margaret Sanger
o She lived after Comstock but defied him through the Comstock law
o Considered the “mother of birth control”
 She coined the term birth control
o She published a magazine about the Woman Rebel
 It was for feminists
 Promoted the use of birth control for the working class who wanted
to control the number of children they had
 Under the Comstock Act, the magazine was band from the mail
because it talked about contraception
o She was arrested under the Comstock Act and was indicted on 9 charges
 Charges were dropped, but she was considered an enemy of the law
 o By 1916, Sanger upped her game
 With the help of her sister, she opened the first birth control clinic in
the US (Brooklyn, NY)
 Offered counselling, birth control information, supplies (condoms)
 Women (mostly working class and immigrants) lined up to get an
appointment
 9 days after it opened (October 16th), the police closed it down and
confiscated everything
 Sanger and her sister were taken to jail
 Sanger spent 30 days in prison
 Her sister went on a hunger strike to protest the
imprisonment of her sister
o Over the next decade, she would be arrested many times for challenging the
Comstock Act

Prostitution and Venereal Disease

 Prostitution was believed to be something a person willingly went into
- Putting a price on sex making it a commodity that can be bought and sold
 Prostitution was a leading social problem during the mid to late 19 th century
 Social reformers saw prostitution as a larger problem
- There were strip clubs, bars, dance halls and burlesque theaters
o Dancing was almost like having sex
- Weren’t concerned with what was causing prostitution
o More concerned with how prostitution made one immoral
- Instead of alleviating the problems that led to prostitution, they preferred to just get
rid of it
 White slavery: women kidnapped off the street through organized crime (pimps) and
would disappear and never be heard from again
- Pimps were considered to be immigrant men
 Tried to control prostitution through:
1. Created rescue homes
- Dorm house where prostitutes stayed
- Run by Christian social reformers
- They would invite prostitutes to come live there for several months to a year
- They would try to educate the prostitute and teach her aspects of Christianity
o How to be a respectable woman eligible for marriage
- Targeted immigrant women
o San Fran home targeted Chinese women
- Tried to teach the Cult of Womanhood to them
2. The Contagious Disease Act
- Started in England, but every colonial country had a version of it
- View prostitution and venereal disease as linked
o Prostitution caused STDs
 - Social reformers were concerned about disease were spreading everywhere
- Focused on safeguarding the health of men
o It was believed many men were getting STDs because of women
o Women were the carriers and transmitters of the disease; men were the
victims
- The British were concerned because many men who were getting these diseases
were in the military
o 1/3 sick cases were a venereal disease
- The Act targeted prostitutes
o Allowed police to arrest prostitutes in naval cities where military men were
o They would have to undergo genital examinations for these diseases
o If they had symptoms, she would be confined in a hospital for up to 3 months
 Called LOCK hospitals
 Couldn’t leave until 3 months was over and they were “cured”
 Treatment was with mercury
 Poisonous so it made women worse
o The Act extended the time a woman had to stay in the hospital
 Extended to a 1-year stay in 1869
o Started targeting all places in Britain (not just military towns)
- Nothing happened to men who had a venereal disease
o Weren’t subjected to arrest or confinement
o Completely ignored the role male customers played in perpetuating disease
- Feminists fought this act
o Josephine Butler (1828-1906)
 She believed this Act discriminated against women
 Believed it was humiliating for women to undergo painful
treatments, be confined for 3 months to a year, and endure
lost wages
 Spoke out against the hypocrisy
 Led a campaign to appeal the Act intentionally (1869-1886)
 The Act was repealed in Britain in 1886

Eugenics and Reproduction

 Eugenics was a rising movement
- It was strong in Canada
- Concerned with survival of the fittest
o If you are meant to survive, you will survive without the help of social
reformers, government aid, etc.
o To be strong meant to be physically, financially and morally strong
- Many social reformers were supporters of this movement
o Fed into their beliefs that white middle-class individuals were meant to
survive
 Social reformers created a project to increase the breeding of “strong” people
 - Have a strong man and a strong woman come together to reproduce
- Encouraged weak (people of colour, poor, physically disabled) people not to
reproduce
- Why were people concerned with the fitness of the future generation?
o They wanted labour force to be strong and capable which would ensure
welfare of the economy
o Poor people were a burden to society
 Seen as undesirable
o Wanted to create a strong military
 Can’t do that with a generation of sick, unfit people
 This ideal could thrive because it used language of science to give itself authenticity and
credibility
- Also, compromised of many middle class social reformers so lots of support
 Lots of immigration during this time made it popular
- In the late 19th and early 20th century, there were a lot of immigrants from Italy and
Eastern Europe coming to US and Canada
o Having lots of children
- Reformers were scared because they were becoming outnumbered
o They felt threatened and invaded
- The middle class wouldn’t be able to compete in a capitalist society
o Many social reformers advocated for birth control
 Only for the undesirable population
 Immigrants, working class, indigenous people
 Margaret Sanger believed in eugenics
- She opened a clinic in Brooklyn
o Place that had a lot of Italian and Jewish immigrants and poor working class
families
o However, the Comstock law came into play during this time
 Made it difficult for women to obtain these products
 Why did social reformers fight for birth control?
1. Feminist reasons
- Argued for a married woman’s right for control over her body
- Birth control meant one could have recreational sex which was liberating for women
- Could save their lives
o Decreases the chances of a woman dying during childbirth
- Not being pregnant year after year would alleviate a woman’s misery
- Birth control was only talked about within marriage
o Premarital sex was still seen as bad
2. Child Welfare Motivation
- Birth control was used for the sake of the children
o Especially in poor families
- Children were better taken care of within families that wanted them
o Voluntary motherhood: a woman became pregnant willingly
 - Fewer children meant the family would be better off financially
- Fewer children meant each child didn’t have to compete for the parent’s attention
- Socialists argued birth control would help elevate the standard of living for the
working class
o Elevate the quality of life for the entire family
3. Eugenics
- Based on a scientific principle
o Inferior people should be contraception so their inferior traits would not be
passed down to the next generation
- Believed that children inherited physical, mental and moral traits
o If a mother was a prostitute, the child would be deemed a prostitute
 Based on eugenics, there was a motion for undesirable people to be sterilized
- Called Compulsory Sterilization
- Forced sterilization took place more extensively than we know
- Common in residential schools, mental institutes and prisons
- How could they get away with this?
o These institutions were run by the pillars of society (social reformers)
 They supported this motion
o Took place behind closed doors and out of the eye of the public
 These institutions could do that they wanted without the public
scrutinizing them
o People in these institutions were already thought of as undesirable
 Had the endorsement of society
 By the 1930s, in the US, 34 states passed sterilization legislation
o This legislation allowed the sterilization of mental defectives without their
consent
o They would tell the person they were having their appendix, gall bladder or
tonsils removed
 They made up a surgery to willingly get them on the operating table
 Found out about the sterilization when they woke or could go on for
years without knowing
- Why have this law?
o It had economic benefits
 Considered a cost saving measure
 If one was a financial burden to society, their child would be too
 Wanted to eliminate this problem
o These institutions didn’t like dealing with menstruating girls
 If sterilized, they wouldn’t have their periods anymore
 A disproportionate number of those labelled ineffective didn’t have anything wrong
with them mentally
- Covered a whole range of people
- Unskilled workers, unemployed, unmarried women, gay men, sexually promiscuous
women, old/young single mothers, blacks, Latinos, Indigenous people
 The most damaging program of sterilization was in Alberta
- Alberta Sexual Sterilization Act
o Passed in 1928, and was effective until 1972
o BC and Ontario had similar acts too
o Over 3000 individuals in Alberta were sterilized under this act
o Initially, in 1928, the act only allowed sterilization with consent by the person
or their legal guardian
o In 1937, there was an amendment that allowed sterilization to occur without
the consent of the person
 Believed they were too defective to give consent
 Targeted Aboriginal and Metis people
 There is a documentary on Leilani Muri on compulsory sterilization
 Between 1907-1939, more than 33,000 people (men and women) were legally sterilized
in the US
- By 1941, this number increased to 38,000
 1930s was a big time for this law, why?
- The Great Depression
o Most people were unemployed and struggled financially so having more
children would create a greater burden to their family
- The eugenics movement became so popular because of Hitler
o Hitler was impressed with the scientific justification of the eugenics
o He borrowed these ideas to justify who was superior versus inferior
o However, Hitler and the Nazis applied these ideas for a far more sinister way
 For example, sterilization and extermination projects
 By 1970s, most of the sterilization legislation was repealed
- Seen as a criminal act
- Due to the legacy of World War II and the holocaust
- People lost their taste for it after seeing how Hitler used these ideas