NOTES: Progressive Reforms

~Progressives shared the belief that industrialization and urbanization had

created troubling problems, & they wanted to reform them~

Muckrakers

- Sensational investigative reporters who uncovered a wide range of issues facing America

“The Jungle”There was never the least attention paid to what was cut up for the sausage. 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 [tuburculosis] 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 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.

Upton Sinclair

• “The Jungle” – Chicago’s meatpacking

industry – revealed unsanitary

conditions

• Lead to the Pure Food & Drug Act – Inspections

A day in the life of the beef

industry

Mary Had a Little Lamb 17:00

“How the Other Half Lives”Today three-fourths of (New York’s) people live in the tenements, and the nineteenth century drift of the population to the cities is sending ever-increasing multitudes to crowd them.  The fifteen thousand tenant houses that were the despair of the sanitarian in the past generation have swelled into thirty-seven thousand, and more than twelve hundred thousand persons call them home... If it shall appear that the sufferings and the sins of the "other half," and the evil they breed, are but as just punishment upon the community that gave it no other choice… In the tenements all the influences make for evil; rich and poor alike; the nurseries of pauperism and crime that fill our jails and police courts;

Jacob Riis

- “How the other half Lives”

- photographer

- Focused on the crowded, unsafe, rat-infested tenement buildings

Jane Addams – Hull House

- settlement house for immigrants (poor)- community center that provided social

services to the urban poor- (List 3): day care, health clinics, (List 3): day care, health clinics,

lectures, music, art classes, lectures, music, art classes, employment bureaus, gymnasiums, employment bureaus, gymnasiums, and savings banks and savings banks

- inspired other middle class women to help with social issues.

“History of Standard Oil” (Mr. Rockefeller) secured an alliance with the railroads to drive out rivals… He worked with the railroads to prevent other people getting oil to manufacture, or if they got it he worked with the railroads to prevent the shipment of the product. If it reached a dealer, he did his utmost to bully or wheedle him to countermand his order. If he failed in that, he undersold until the dealer, losing on his purchase, was glad enough to buy thereafter of Mr. Rockefeller.”

Ida Tarbell

• “The History of Standard Oil”

• Reported that Rockefeller used ruthless methods to ruin his competitors, charged high prices, & therefore had huge profits.

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (1909)

- W.E.B. Dubois - Harvard PhD Graduate- Founded organization to fight for African American

Civil Rights

- Ida B. Wells- anti-lynching journalist that criticized Jim Crow laws

“For African Americans to be physically free from peonage

[forced, low-paid labor], mentally

free from ignorance,

politically free from disfranchisement, & socially free from

insult.”

19th amendment women’s suffrage

- National American Women Suffrage Association (NAWSA) - Founded by Susan B. Anthony & Carrie

Catt - Try to get individual states to grant

suffrage

- National Woman’s Party- Radical group founded by Alice Paul &

Lucy Burns - Fought for a congressional amendment

- 1920 women can vote!!!

Conservation Movement

Theodore Roosevelt

- Movement to protect nature and natural resources

- Protected over 170 million acres of land with the formation of national parks

- Ex.) Grand Canyon National Park

18th amendment Prohibition

- It is illegal to produce, sell or consume alcohol in the US.