Lack of toilets, that was the basis of Mother’s Day. In 1858 Anna Reeves Jarvis organized a Mothers Working Day to protest the lack of toilets in the Apalachian villages where she lived. That lack of clean toilets led to diseases and who had to pay for the care? The mothers.
The initiative was taken, with a slight twist, in 1870 by Julia Ward Howe, a Boston poet and pacifist, who wanted to protest the massacre of the American Civil War. Sons had to go to war and died, men returned as beasts, and mothers had to uphold civilization. That deserved a Mothers Day to draw attention to, Julia Howe thought. “Our husbands shall not come to us reeking with carnage. … Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. ”
Even when the war ended, Mother’s Day, on June 2, continued to exist.
When Howe died in 1905, her daughter made it her life’s goal to make Mother’s Day a national day, to be celebrated annually on the second Sunday of May. And for the mothers.
As Howe became more successful with her anniversary, smart entrepreneurs became increasingly aware that there was a trade in mothers. The first is the flower industry.
And that’s how it all started. First as a protest against lack of toilets, then as a signal against war and violence, and now as a gold mine for florists and soap sellers.
Sources): Slate
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