EN102
Prof. Howe
Paragraphing: What Comes First, Second, Third—and Why?
Each member of your group should have one slip of paper with a sentence on it. These
sentences combine into one paragraph, published in David E. Kyvig’s book, Daily Life in
the United States, 1920-1940, from which we will be drawing some of our reading this
term. The goal of this exercise is to test our group-level skill at organizing complete
thoughts into a larger whole. Read your sentence individually, then share your sentence
with your peers; as a group, decide which order best constructs a complete paragraph.
Remember that your paragraph should have a topic sentence that describes in broad
conceptual strokes what’s to come in the paragraph; it should have a conclusion sentence
that sums up the main point of the paragraph in an equally conceptual manner. Each
paragraph should only contemplate one main idea, and that idea should be explored in
supporting sentences.
----The amendment not only gave the country’s 30 million voting-age women a new political
status, it also conferred the opportunity to claim enhanced social standing and greater
independence upon every female in the land.
On August 18, 1920, a tumultuous special session of the Tennessee legislature completed
ratification of an amendment guaranteeing women the right to vote.
A second profound transformation of American life by means of a constitutional
amendment occurred only seven months after national prohibition took effect.
While in recent years a number of states had granted suffrage to women, that fact
scarcely reduced the Nineteenth Amendment’s importance.
----No other government actions during the 1920s would have nearly as much immediate
impact on the daily lives of ordinary citizens.
When the conditions of daily life changed dramatically in the 1930s, however, sharply
revised thinking about government would follow.
National prohibition and women’s suffrage would alter both men’s and women’s views
of the capacity of their national government to reorder their lives.
These two reforms in the basic terms of U.S. government had both been long sought by
politically active women and their many male allies who had, after all, cast the votes to
establish prohibition and enfranchise women.
The circumstances of American daily life were both effect and cause of shifts in national
policy through these two decades of prosperity and pain.
As long as those lives appeared to be improving, as was generally the case throughout the
1920s, most Americans remained reluctant to encourage the government to intrude
further.
But in an era when the federal government generally remained distant from people’s
affairs, the effect of the two amendments would be felt by all.
----Less than three weeks into the new year, a constitutional amendment took effect that
prohibited the manufacture, transportation, and sale of alcoholic beverages.
The days when alcohol remained a normal, or at least legal, part of most American diets
ended on January 16, presumably forever.
In 1920 residents of the United States found themselves surrounded by easily observable
signs that they were entering a new era in their everyday lives.
Temperance enthusiasts staged mock funerals for “King Alcohol” while opponents
offered a few sad eulogies for “John Barleycorn.”