Purity and Hygiene - Women, Prostitution, and the American Plan, 1900-1930

Social purity in the anti-slavery tradition, struggled to prevent State-regulated prostitution in the 19th century and neo-regulation in the twentieth. Joining with Mid-Western and Far Western purity reform associations and with the vigilance societies formed to end the traffic in white slaves, the American Purity Alliance left those organizations to join the Rockefeller and physician dominated American Social Hygiene Association. Seen as old lights by Rockefeller, purity reformers and their feminist allies were pushed to the periphery of power. They struggled to maintain the environmental implications of social hygiene, but lost to the eugenic/hereditarian thought that narrowed the movement's implications.

This study raises new questions about American feminism, Progressive reforms, public health, and the significance of women's suffrage. Rather than rescuing prostitutes, the movement resulted in their further criminalization, deportation, and detainment. Venereal disease rates, rather than declining as they had in Europe, rose dramatically in the 1920s as a result of policies implemented between 1900 and 1920. Ultimately, the repression of white slave traffic and the closing of the red light districts rivaled or exceeded the scope of Prohibition upon the nation. Pivar provides a comparative perspective often missing in other studies of policy toward prostitution and venereal disease.

List of contents

Preface
Introduction
The Apogee of Anglo-American Cooperation
Changing Medical Policy Toward Prostitution
A Movement in Transition
A Revitalized Movement
The Search for Policy
Rockefeller Reshapes Social Hygiene
Ideology, Economy and Social Policy
Conserving the Nation's Health
Social Hygiene Militant
Epilogue: Planning for the 1920s and Beyond
Selected Bibliography

About the author

DAVID J. PIVAR is Professor Emeritus of History and American Studies at California State University at Fullerton. He is author of Purity Crusade: Sexual Morality and Social Control, 1868-1900 (Greenwood, 1973).

Product details

• Authors: David J. Pivar, Pivar David J.
• Publisher: Bloomsbury
• Languages: English
• Age Recommendation: ages 7 to 17
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 30.11.2001
• EAN: 9780313320323
• ISBN: 978-0-313-32032-3
• No. of pages: 312
• Weight: 652 g
• Series: Contributions in American History
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Psychology > Miscellaneous; USA, American History, 20th Century, 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000, HISTORY / United States / 20th Century, POLITICAL SCIENCE / American Government / National, 20th century, c 1900 to c 1999, United States of America, USA, History of the Americas, Sex and sexuality, social aspects, Central / national / federal government, Ethical Issues: Prostitution & Sex Industry, Ethical issues and debates, Central government, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Human Sexuality