Monday March 12, 2012
Today in class we discussed Chapter 8 out of "Major Problems in American Constitutional History. This chapter was mainly about workers and their rights/obligations. Document number 2 is called "The People's Part Announces its Agenda for Reform, 1896." This document outlines the demands of the People's Party. There are several good ideas, but there are also some ideas that are not as helpful, in my opinion. Under the Finances section, I liked the 1st demand, which calls for a national money that is issued by the General Government. This would call for no intervention from banks and people would be more protected from debt and unequal distribution. Number 7 actually made me think, the people WANT a graduated income tax! I found it interesting that the People's Party wanted the federal government to own the railroads because it would be in the best interest of the people. If the government owned the railroads there would be less potential for monopolies, and therefore, prices would be competitive (which is a good thing). The people demanded a direct election of the President, Vice-President, and U.S. Senators. This would get rid of the electoral college and make voting a more direct thing: people vote for the person, not for a different person in the electoral college who will hopefully vote how they said they would. I do not really agree with the direct legislation through the initiative and referendum idea. Laws already take a long time to be passed and if people have to vote on them, it could just lengthen the process. This document is very forward-looking though and many of the ideas were later adopted by other political parties.
Document #5 is a court case that ruled that women can only work 10 hours a day. The courts found this constitutional because women are not as strong as men. During discussion we were supposed to take a feminist stance and debate whether we felt this ruling was fair or not. I think this ruling is unfair. The men who created this law said that they were trying to protect women because they are fragile and also cannot work too much at a job because they have lives outside of work. Even though this could have been true for a majority of women, it is not the case for everyone. If I was working back during this time I would be angry. Single women who do not have a family to take care of and only need to take care of themselves should be able to work as long as they can (meaning more than 10 hours). I understand that the men wanted to protect the women because they are "fragile" and will be the mothers of the future leaders of the country, but it is still discrimination. In my opinion, I believe that a strong-willed woman who can work just as hard and just as long as a man can would, in turn, produce strong babies. So, using this way of thinking, the men are only jeopardizing the future of the country by not letting the women work!
The essay "Gender, Law, and Labor in the Progressive Era" was a very interesting article. The author describes that Muller's attorneys argued that women did not need protection, and that by giving them more protection just widens the gap of equality between men and women. This essay shows how psychological evidence was used in court for the first time. In the end, the courts used this to justify sex discrimination in the workplace, saying that women were, indeed, weaker than men. This is especially true in jobs such as police, firefighting, military, and more physically demanding jobs. This is very interesting to me because I knew several women in the military and they try twice as hard to prove that they are just as good as the men are, but men still look at them as half of what they are. For instance, my boyfriend is in the Army and there was a woman in his class. One day they had to go out on a ruck march and the woman's heal of her foot got cut open because of her boot. It was a several mile march, but she refused to stop because she knew that she had to prove herself. Today, everyone in the group knows that the girl is super tough and no one messes with her and sees her as a great soldier. It really sucks that woman have to work twice as hard just be seen by men as half their equal!!!
Today's Butters' Topic was Morality in History. The main question was, "should you include your sense of morality when you write about history?" At first, I thought that you should include your own thoughts and beliefs because you know what you are writing about and who your intended audience is, so it your audience would most likely belief the same things that you do. I learned that history should be done through amoral stand point - one should not impose any morality. As historians, we pick subjects that not only interest us, but also show who were are. So by picking subjects that show who we are, we are initially showing our own morality. For example, if I wrote about how great a person Adolf Hitler was, people would be able to sense my morality through my writings. Morality is where the argument of any topic comes from, such as good and evil. Doris Kearns Goodwin explains what makes a good leader through writing about what we consider great and controversial presidents, like Lincoln and Lydon Johnson. Edmund Burke thought that in order to understand the present, you have to look at institutions and morality of the past. For example, historical experiences help us to distinguish what is considered good and evil: we believe that Hitler is evil, but the U.S. was good in trying to stop the spread of communism throughout the world. This type of value-centered history can be difficult to understand and master, but it makes for better writers and readers once you learn the pros and cons. The downfalls of using morality in history include presentism and ethnocentrism. When used correctly, a person can illustrate their ideas and beliefs and get others to join them, but this needs to be done by using concrete examples and experiences in history.
Good use of Burke
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