- Research question
- What was the reality and conceptualization of immigrant women?
- Why did the immigrants decide to leave their countries?
- What should they do after arriving the United States at first?
- How was the atmosphere in the 1800s and 1900s in the Bowery in Lower East side in the United States?
- What jobs immigrant women could have?
- How have immigrant women tried to attain their rights in the United States?
- What were their efforts for woman’s rights?
- What relation between sewing machines, garment industry, and women’s rights?
- Why should we know their double disability: “the point to the ethnicity of gender and the gender of ethnicity.[1]”
- Hook & Thesis Statement
Nathalie Rheinsberg was a Jewish woman from Germany. She had escaped from poverty in her country to new life and liberty in America. She met a man in New York City, and she fell in love with this man, and they married. When both were around 22 years old. This couple settled in Lower East Side. Their life started at 97 Orchard Street in 1870. They had four children and had a dream together. One day, the nightmare came to this family. Her husband, Julius Gumpertz, disappeared without any trace. She could not find him because it was tough economic times. She waited for him but he never came back. She had to do something for a living. She started to dressmaking in her apartment as her start-up business, but she could not own her property because she was a married woman. All property had to belong to men at that time. It was hard time women have their own voice in from 19thto early 20th century. Women could choose very limited options of jobs. Dressmaking was one of the options for women even thought it was not easy and harsh environment like sweatshop. However, women need to work for their children and themselves. Although there were many difficulties and disadvantages for European and Asian women immigrants in the Bowery during the early 20th century, they worked in the garment industry, and the work helped them gain power, and then they achieved political and social rights.
- Decade discussed in section one
1870
Explanation of the environment where the immigrants lived in as 1870 and the reasons and background for choice to come to the United States.
- Topic
Background of the immigrants.
Social, political, economical, and diplomatic background of the period.
- How does this topic support your thesis statements?
I have searched many images of the 19th century in the Bowery, and it was not easy to understand why European and Asian people left their countries, because looking at the images of the United States in the 1800s, it has not a better environment. I am still finding the reasons why the people came to the Bowery. Figuring out those topics will offer the fundamental background of development for immigrant society.
- Which sources will you use to support this topic, how will you use them?
I will use not only sources of the Bowery but also sources about Europe in the 1800s and 1900s, such as, Ready-to-wear and ready-to-work: a century of industry and immigrants in Paris and New York by Nancy L. Green, and also sources from the Tenement Museum. I will explain the background atmosphere of their lifestyle in the period.
- Section two
What could women immigrants do for a living?
- Topic
Dressmaking
How does this topic support your thesis statements?
Even though its environment was very harsh, the garment industry was significant for immigrant women because they had limited options for getting jobs. Working enabled women to buy food, keep their house, say something, and do something for their children and themselves.
- Which sources will you use to support this topic, how will you use them?
I will focus on how their work had improved. I will use the books Throughout the Eye of the Needle: Immigrants and enterprise in New York’s Garment trade by Roger D. Waldinger, and an article Garment Sweatshops: Then and Now by Daniel Soyer.
- Section three
What was the success of immigrant women in the early 20th century?
- How does this topic support your thesis statements?
Many women have devoted and sacrificed their lives for their children and woman’s rights. And now it is not perfect; however, we can live better world.
- Which sources will you use to support this topic, how will you use them?
I was inspired by many images of women in the 1800s. Those are not only garment industry. They were also women who tried to get the rights to vote. I was moved because of their efforts and sacrifices. The women who work and keep their life in unfair or severe situations are same as the former women. I also will use the book A Coat of Many Colors: Immigrant, Globalism, and Reform in the New York City Garment Industry edited by Daniel Soyer for this section.
- Conclusion
My topic will prove my thesis statement in three ways: their background and choice to come to the United States, what the immigrant women could do for the living, and how they thrived their lives to better and woman’s rights.
There are still many women—not only immigrant women—devote their lives to woman’s rights. However, I believe the woman’s rights are not completing by intellectual women. It can be developed by the woman who live with one’s belief for the better world and who works and tries to do something for one’s lives or people she loves. For instance, the German immigrant woman, who lived at 97 Orchard Street (it is Tenement Museum now) fought for her rights even she could not speak English at all. She won, she preserved her children, and she became the first woman who can have her own property. The world becomes better than the 1800s; however, these efforts still or more require in recent world.
[1] Nancy L. Green, Ready-to-wear and ready-to-work: a century of industry and immigrants in Paris and New York (Duke University Press, 1997)
