Textile Workers Strike for Better Wages and Working Conditions

During the 1920s and the 1930s, mill owners and textile manufacturers were giving textile workers bad paychecks and loads of work, which the workers knew was totally unfair. Many people were looking for jobs but could not find one because mill owners were putting the work of two or three men, onto one man. The workers would just put up with everything because they were afraid of losing their jobs until September of 1934 where workers went on strike until the passage of the NRA, a code which provides a maximum and minimum number of hours one may work and minimum wage one may earn per week. To the workers, everything seemed too good to be true, and it was. Mill owners did not go by the code but continued doing what they were doing before, giving low wages and a lot of work to workers. Workers had gone on strike again but had failed at making a difference due to "the combination of the mill owners' intransigence, the Textile Workers' Union's lack of resources, the mill workers' increasingly desperate financial situation and Roosevelt's focus on the need for industrial peace to achieve economic recovery.

1) Why did it take so long for workers to go on strike? What had given them the courage to go on strike and risk their jobs?

2) What kind of impact did the mill workers have in the job industry?

Was There a Sexual Revolution in the 1920s?

Yes, there actually was a sexual revolution in the 1920s. During this time, many things about sexuality had changed. Youths and middle class men and women had felt more free to discuss their own feelings about sex to one another, sex talk spread into the media across the whole nation, and women started changing the style of they had dressed and the way they danced to skimpy and sexual. They had started tlaking about sex like it was nothing and that had led to many things during this time. Dating was caused by the "house of prostitution on wheels" which had then led to "petting" which 92 percent of women had admitted into engaging in. During this time contraceptives had been acceped so there had been much more premarital sex going on, the culture was changing. Many didn't think much of "petting" or premarital sex being too wrong because people would only engage in these activities to someone who they had believed they were going to marry in the future. Women were getting more and more rights which had led them to engage in better jobs and their economic lives were reflected in their sexual attitudes. Some women were brave enough to deny the "double standard" and believed they had the same rights as men sexually. During these times, America had changed sexually and I believe that this was the start to the kinds of attitudes and beliefs many have about sex now days which really is more open within people and the media like it had become in the 1920s. Women in the 1920s also started doing things like smoking, drinking, and staying out all night like the men during that time which they still do to this day.

1) How did most perceive the nations sexual change in the 1920s?
2) How was America economically changed duing this time due to women getting more rights and expressing themselves freely?