In the Library: Resisting Reform, San Francisco Women and Vice in the Progressive Era

The early twentieth century was an energetic period of American history, commonly known as the Progressive Era, when middle-class women across the country agitated for social reforms-from demanding the right to vote to health and sanitation regulations to anti-vice measures. The California Historical Society's collection from the League of Women Voters provides a remarkable look at these politically active women in San Francisco. But, what do we know about those women who were not as well-educated or not from the "respectable class"? Working class women and those that did not share the same morality as Progressives were often the objects of "reform" and whose ideas were rarely recorded. But, by carefully reading the archival material left behind we can attempt to restore the voices of working women and their responses to this era of reform.