ack, Tam..now you've got me thinking it would be fun to set up an exhibit called BraBurner's Mother!

The Sensible Clothing League (or whatever it was called) and the ladies who balked at wearing restrictive underthings were earlier than bra-burners. Bras hadn't quite been invented yet by then (invented, but not considered worth manufacturing)
I think it was mid-20's before a Manufacturer of Unmentionables came up with the startling discovery that women's bazooms are not all the same size. That's when bras started getting a little bit more popular.

The Sensible League was not in the US. I think I remember reading that some of their ideas were picked up here by our women who were trying to be rid of corsets.

Until the 1920's, the US population was more Rural than City. It's hard to guess how Women's Ideas spread and were adapted to suit each group because there just wasn't much attention paid to how women spread gender-specific communication. There are files of old newspapers and such to track a lot of historical information but there just wasn't much interest in writing down what the ladies discussed while they were baking pies.

Broom Brigades, Temperance, Votes For Women, Corset Resistence..were all going on close enough together in time that any of them could have been the focus of any rural group because of the way women's ideas would have travelled.
I can not figure out how to even put a semi-solid guess on whether my local Broom Brigade was Temperance or something less annoying.



It would be really stinky to burn a corset!
(..plus, whalebone tended to be cherished.)