ABSTRACT
Contrary to common assumptions about the nineteenth-century woman’s rights movement, strong-minded women highlighted economic issues in their discussion of women’s oppression. They linked intemperance, poverty, prostitution, as well as wifebeating and domestic tyranny to women’s economic dependency and powerlessness. Advocates for women were deeply concerned about women’s ability to make a decent living, control their own earnings, and have expanded opportunities to ensure economic independence and self sufficiency. The 1850s were also years of social and economic transition, and woman’s rights advocates were responding to their particular historical conditions (see “Bread Question of Most Importance to Women” and “Go To Work for the Sake of Women”).
