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Jessica Reed
1/28/2010 12:04:09 pm

First, reformers were people who wanted to change social laws. In the 1800s, there were many different types of reformers. For example, there were the advocates for the women’s suffrage, or women’s right to vote. There were also abolitionists, who wanted to get rid of slavery. Lastly, there was the temperance movement, which was for the banning of alcoholic drinks. These reformers wanted to change the laws society had set in place before the 1800s. I think the main cause of this social reform outbreak in the 1800s was due to the expansion of land. As state boundaries were expanding and changing, people’s ideas about society and its laws were also changing. America was growing, therefore people’s beliefs and ideas shifted along with this growth.

Sources:
http://www.wordwebonline.com/en/SOCIALREFORMER

http://www.slideshare.net/Philsfan/reform-movements-of-the-1800s

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Arjun Rajesh
1/28/2010 10:02:10 pm

Reformers were people who wanted to "re form" America. They wanted to change laws in order to do this. Many reformers struggled hard and worked for women's rights. I think that would have definitley been a priority on a reformers list but it must have been very hard to achieve women's rights. Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were the two major reformers in this field. They talked about the advantages of women's rights and were very important to achieving it. There were also other reformers. One group of reformers argued to ban alcohol. One group argued to end slavery once and for all. I think that these reformers were very important in shaping our current life.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/reform
http://www.slideshare.net/Philsfan/reform-movements-of-the-1800s

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Molly Buring
1/31/2010 10:35:05 am

First of all, a reformer is someone who "seeks change". There were a lot of different types of reformers who all wanted to change different things. One was the "Abolitionist Movement". That was when people wanted to stop slavery. (Abolitionist basically means to destroy, abolish)These were people who were totally all against slavery. Some of them were very aggressive and were willing to break the law to prove their point and get people aware of their cause, but not all. Like some were patient and wanted to solve things by elections and meetings and things like that. But some could care less and doing things by the book.

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molly.
1/31/2010 10:40:31 am

Whether it was the Women's Right movement, abolishing slavery, or banning alcohol, what seems consistent with all of these reformist movements is that they took decades and decades to actually become laws and legal. They may seem like they could take 10-15 years but they really might take as long as 50-100 years, maybe more. They, the reformers, weren't just trying to change the law though, they were trying to change the way people think.

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molly.
1/31/2010 10:41:03 am

my sources for both were:
Jessie
Arjun
my daddy
my head

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Jessica Reed
2/28/2010 09:45:05 am

One of the key problems that reformers tried to solve was poverty. Since, the time of the first reformers was in the Gilded Age there was a lot of poverty that was partly hidden from the wealth of a few individuals. Yet, the reformers were aware of the ongoing poverty in the United States at this time therefore, poverty became a problem to solve. Reformers went about doing this by creating settlement houses, which were community centers and social service agencies, to help the needy in their poor communities. In these houses, special services were provided in order the help the poor. These services included childcare, healthcare clinics, and classes. One of the most eminent settlement houses of the 1800s was the Hull House created by Jane Addams and Jane Gates Starr in Chicago in 1889. Jane Addams and Jane Gates Starr are just two reformers who tried to solve poverty and other social problems in the 1800s.

Personally, I think that it was very wise to move settlement houses into poor neighborhoods because then the poor could access the services of these houses better. Also, by moving into poor communities, the determination of the reformers to solve poverty was evidently shown.

Sources:
Class notes
http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Hull_House

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