The Progressive Era

THE PROGRESSIVE ERA US History Problems from the Gilded Age (you should be able to describe specific problems for each topic) Big Business/Monopolies Working Conditions Urban Life Government Corruption Inequality Research Directions You will be responsible for researching information on the Progressive Era reformers. These reformers attempted to fix the problems created by the Age of Industry. All students will be responsible for reading all of the information on all of the Progressive reformers and completing the assigned handout. Fill in the first column on the problems (use readings, excerpts and knowledge of American history) Fill in the middle column what the reformer did about the problem Fill in the final column by writing down what reforms were passed in response to the Progressives action (not all problems were solved, some apply to more than one reformer) Progressive Reformers Working Conditions: John Spargo, Upton Sinclair Urban Problems: Jacob Riis, Jane Addams, Frances Willard, Margaret Sanger Political Corruption: Lincoln Steffens Monopolies: Ida Tarbell Inequality: Carrie Chapman Catt, Alice Paul , Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. DuBois John Spargo – Child Labor Author of The Bitter Cry of the Children Work in the coal breakers is exceedingly hard and dangerous. Crouched over the chutes, the boys sit hour after hour, picking out the pieces of slate and other refuse from the coal as it rushes past to the washers. From the cramped position they have to assume, most of them become more or less deformed and bent-backed like old men. The coal is hard, and accidents to the hands, such as cut, broken, or crushed fingers, are common among the boys. Sometimes there is a worse accident: a terrified shriek is heard, and a boy is mangled and torn in the machinery, or disappears in the chute to be picked out later smothered and dead. Clouds of dust fill the breakers and are inhaled by the boys, laying the foundations for asthma and miners consumption. I once stood in a breaker for half an hour and tried to do the work a twelve year old boy was doing day after day, for ten hours at a stretch, for sixty cents a day. The gloom of the breaker appalled me. Outside the sun shone brightly, the air was (clear), and the birds sang in chorus with the trees and the rivers. Within the breaker there was blackness, clouds of deadly dust enfolded everything, the harsh, grinding roar of the machinery and the ceaseless rushing of coal through the chutes filled the ears. I tried to pick out the pieces of slate from the hurrying stream of coal, often missing them; my hands were bruised and cut in a few minutes; I was covered from head to foot with coal dust… John Spargo – Child Labor Author of The Bitter Cry of the Children John Spargo – Child Labor Author of The Bitter Cry of the Children Reaction to The Bitter Cry of the Children 38 states passed child labor laws in 1912 alone. Keating Owen Act (1916) - law passed by Congress regulating child labor for any company involved in interstate trade minimum age of 14 in general minimum age of 16 for mining or night work eight hour maximum per day Hammer v. Dagenhart (1918) – declared Keating Owen Act unconstitutional; not addressed again at the federal level until 1938 Upton Sinclair Author of The Jungle Upton Sinclair wrote the book The Jungle. It was intended to show the horrible working conditions of the meat packing industry, but had a greater impact on the nation by exposing the disgusting food Americans were eating. Upton Sinclair Author of The Jungle EXCERPT #1: With one member trimming beef in a cannery, and another working in a sausage factory, the family had a first-hand knowledge of the great majority of Packingtown swindles. For it was the custom, as they found, whenever meat was so spoiled that it could not be used for anything else, either to can it or else to chop it up into sausage. With what had been told them by Jonas, who had worked in the pickle rooms, they could now study the whole of the spoiled-meat industry on the inside, and read a new and grim meaning into that old Packingtown jest that they use everything of the pig except the squeal. Upton Sinclair Author of The Jungle EXCERPT #2: Jonas had told them how the meat would often be found sour, and how they would rub it up with soda to take away the smell, and sell it to be eaten on free-lunch counters; also of all the miracles of chemistry which they performed, giving to any sort of meat, fresh or salted, whole or chopped, any color and any flavor and any odor they chose…And yet, in spite of this, there would be hams found spoiled, some of them with an odor so bad that a man could hardly bear to be in the room with them. Also, after the hams had been smoked, there would be found some that had gone to the bad. Formerly these had been sold as "Number Three Grade," but later on some ingenious person had hit upon a new device, and now they would extract the bone, about which the bad part generally lay, and insert in the hole a white-hot iron. After this invention there was no longer Number One, Two, and Three Grade, there was only Number One Grade. The packers were always originating such schemes, they had what they called "boneless hams," which were all the odds and ends of pork stuffed into casings; and "California hams," which were the shoulders, with big knuckle joints, and nearly all the meat cut out; and fancy "skinned hams," which were made of the oldest hogs, whose skins were so heavy and coarse that no one would buy them ,that is, until they had been cooked and chopped fine and labeled "head cheese!" Upton Sinclair Author of The Jungle EXCERPT #3: It was only when the whole ham was spoiled that it came into the department of Elzbieta. Cut up by the two-thousand-revolutions- a-minute flyers, and mixed with half a ton of other meat, no odor that ever was in a ham could make any difference. There was never the least attention paid to what was cut up for sausage; there would come all the way back from Europe old sausage that had been rejected, and that was moldy and white; it would be dosed with borax and glycerine, and dumped into the hoppers, and made over again for home consumption. There would be meat that had tumbled out on the floor, in the dirt and sawdust, where the workers had tramped and spit uncounted billions of consumption germs. There would be meat stored in great piles in rooms; and the water from leaky roofs would drip over it, and thousands of rats would race about on it. It was too dark in these storage places to see well, but a man could run his hand over these piles of meat and sweep off handfuls of the dried dung of rats. These rats were nuisances, and the packers would put poisoned bread out for them; they would die, and then rats, bread, and meat would go into the hoppers together. This is no fairy story and no joke; the meat would be shoveled into carts, and the man who did the shoveling would not trouble to lift out a rat even when he saw one; there were things that went into the sausage in comparison with which a poisoned rat was a tidbit. There was no place for the men to wash their hands before they ate their dinner, and so they made a practice of washing them in the water that was to be ladled into the sausage. Some of it they would make into "smoked" sausage, but as the smoking took time, and was therefore expensive, they would call upon their chemistry department, and preserve it with borax and color it with gelatin to make it brown. All of their sausage came out of the same bowl, but when they came to wrap it they would stamp some of it "special," and for this they would charge two cents more a pound. Reaction to The Jungle The public was disgusted by The Jungle. President Roosevelt questioned Sinclair’s motives because of his socialist background. Roosevelt had the government investigate further and when he read the Neil-Reynolds Report, he realized the problem was worse than Sinclair reported. Fearing national panic and severe economic repercussions, Roosevelt used all of his power to push Congress to pass new legislation. • Pure Food and Drug Act - required accurate labels on food and drugs • Meat Inspection Act - allowed federal inspectors into meat packing plants Jacob Riis Author of How the Other Half Lives Jacob Riis Author of How the Other Half Lives Lest anybody flatter himself with the notion that these were evils of a day that is happily past and may safely be forgotten, let me mention here three very recent instances of tenement-house life that came under my notice. One was the burning of a rear house in Mott Street, from appearances one of the original tenant-houses that made their owners rich. The fire made homeless ten families, who had paid an average of $5 a month for their mean little cubby- holes. The owner himself told me that it was fully insured for $800, though it brought him in $600 a year rent. He evidently considered himself especially entitled to be pitied for losing such valuable property.

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