User:EMILLS31/Great Depression in the United States

Housewives' and Mothers' Activism in the Great Depression

The Great Depression's political landscape proved conducive to the first large-scale movement of class-conscious working-class women organizers since the country's founding. Housewives, mothers, and working-class women regardless of employment status were driven by rising market prices to become political players within their communities. Black women and immigrant women were essential to these movements, mobilizing their communities to advocate for better conditions. This activism included food boycotts, anti-eviction rallies, the establishment of barter networks, calls for price regulations for food and housing, and gardening co-ops to battle food insecurity.

Women in the United States have a long history of activism regarding housing and the cost of food despite the common and longstanding misconception that homemakers are passive and apolitical. The rising market in the U.S. meant a new issue that consumer had been dealing with for the previous decade: The concept of being an "ethical consumer" and reckoning with their own consumer behavior in the everchanging markets. As the government acted minimally at the time to protect consumers from predatory market tactics, many women as workers, housewives, and mothers found activism a natural part of their role in the name of protecting their families.

Demonstrations and Union Activity

The boycotts done by housewives predominantly revolved around targeting unfair businesses in their communities that price-gauged their shops or refused to support their workers' livelihoods to an acceptable degree. Housewives in New York were particularly active at this time, but housewives and mothers across the country mobilized in this ongoing time of hardship. Historian Annelise Orleck recounts the following demonstrations from a variety of communities:

In New York City, organized bands of Jewish housewives fiercely resisted eviction, arguing that they were merely doing their jobs by defending their homes and those of their neighbors. Barricading themselves in apartments, they made speeches from tenement windows, wielded kettles of boiling water, and threatened to scald anyone who attempted to move furniture out on to the street. Black mothers in Cleveland, unable to convince a local power company to delay shutting off electricity in the homes of families who had not paid their bills, won restoration of power after they hung wet laundry over every utility line in the neighborhood. They also left crying babies on the desks of caseworkers at the Cleveland Emergency Relief Association, refusing to retrieve them until free milk had been provided for each child. These actions reflected a sense of humor but sometimes housewife rage exploded. In Chicago, angry Polish housewives doused thousands of pounds of meat with kerosene and set it on fire at the warehouses of the Armour Company to dramatize their belief that high prices were not the result of shortages.

— Annelise Orleck, "We Are That Mythical Thing Called The Public": Militant Housewives During The Great Depression

Formal organizations were formed by housewives as well, based on the power of these earlier community-based demonstrations: United Council of Working Class Women, Women's Committee of the Washington Commonwealth Federation, Women's Committee against the High Cost of Living, Housewives Industrial League, and the Housewives' League of Detroit to name a few.

New ways of activism came out of these boycotts and a renewed awareness of where folks are putting their money hit the public. One unique demonstration by the League of Women Shoppers and Lee Simonson was a fashion show, attended by high society women of D.C., urging folks to boycott unethically sourced (on the premise of Japanese actions during the 30's) and overpriced Japanese silk (a popular luxury fabric at the time). Simultaneously, a large amount of predominantly unemployed women (but some garment workers and representatives from the American Federation of Hosiery Workers) outside the show marched in protest of the boycott, opening a national conversation about the definition of ethical consumerism. This was one of America's first highly effective acts of fashion activism.

As women either returned or began to enter the workforce, the deplorable conditions quickly became clear to them. The lack of sanitation practices, poor wages, and otherwise unsafe work environments were no longer issues that workers were willing to power through when so many other burdens were weighing on them outside of the workplace. The 1930's brought falling wages and high unemployment, which had workplaces implementing strong efforts to keep women and Black folks out of both jobs and unions. International Ladies Garment Workers Union, Farmer-Labor Women's Federation of Minnesota, and American Federation of Labor were all run by working class women demanding better conditions to work and raise their families under. The speeches and demonstrations done by these groups of women underscored the dichotomy of the positions they assumed in society under early feminism: The home may be the woman's place, but the "home" was no longer just the family's isolated home and property.

Black Women's Roles

Black women served a particularly radical role through the furthering of working-class women's movements. The Great Depression had particularly strong effects on the Black community in the 20's and 30's, forcing Black women to reckon with their relationship to the U.S government. Due to the downturned economy, jobs were scarce and Black men were a huge target of the lay-offs and made up a large population of the unemployed during the Depression era. Black women were also still unable to vote at this time, meaning Black families were facing immense compounding pressures distorting their way of life. These conditions set the precedent for Black women to take action and demand the government expand Welfare. In collaboration with their white counterparts, Black women would help to form the National Welfare Rights Organization. 'Don't Buy Where You Can't Work" boycotts broke out in Black communities, using the role of the homemaking consumer to leverage jobs for Black adults. Black housewives lead marches calling for the government to regulate prices on food while nurses from Black communities set up reproductive health and pre/post natal clinics. Midwife Maude E. Callen is noted by many to have been the biggest player in reforming healthcare for Black folks during the Depression.

The efforts of these "Militant Housewives" had lasting effects on the United States, predominantly the expansion of welfare and the birth of widespread feminist movements as well as the strengthening of unionization movements in the U.S.