PROGRESSIVEPROGRESSIVE

ERAERA

1890s-19201890s-1920

A21A21ww

9.2.139.2.13

ESSENTIAL ESSENTIAL QUESTIONSQUESTIONS

► Who were the Progressives?Who were the Progressives?► What reforms did they seek?What reforms did they seek?► How successful were How successful were

Progressive Era reforms in Progressive Era reforms in the period 1890-1920?the period 1890-1920? Consider: political change, social change (industrial conditions, urban life, women, prohibition)Consider: political change, social change (industrial conditions, urban life, women, prohibition)

ORIGINS OF ORIGINS OF PROGRESSIVE PROGRESSIVE

REFORMREFORM

ProgressivismProgressivism

WHO? “Progressives”urban middle-class: managers & professionals; women

WHY? Address the problems arising from:

industrialization (big business, labor strife)

urbanization (slums, political machines, corruption)

immigration (ethnic diversity)

inequality & social injustice (women & racism)

1920s

1890s

1901

1917

WHEN? “Progressive Reform Era”

ProgressivismProgressivismWHAT are their goals?►Democracy – government accountable to the

people►Regulation of corporations &

monopolies►Social justice – workers, poor, minorities

►Environmental protection►Address political corruption

HOW?►Government (laws, regulations,

programs)►Efficiency

value experts; use of scientific study to determine the best solution Called – Scientific Management

Question is … HOW MUCH?????

Origins of ProgressivismOrigins of Progressivism“Muckrakers” – investigative journalists►Jacob Riis – How the Other Half Lives (1890)►Ida Tarbell – “The History of the Standard Oil Co.” (1902)►Lincoln Steffens – The Shame of the Cities (1904)

Ida Ida TarbellTarbell

Lincoln Lincoln SteffensSteffens

HWRead only 1 and Answer ?’s

REFORMSREFORMS

Well-known REFORMSWell-known REFORMS►Workplace & labor reforms Example Event: Triangle

Shirtwaist Factory Fire - 1911

It is remembered as one of the most infamous incidents in American industrial history, as the deaths were largely preventable

**The tragedy brought widespread attention to the dangerous sweatshop conditions of factories, and led to the development of a series of laws and regulations that better protected the safety of workers

As we watch…in your notebookAs we watch…in your notebook

I. What were conditions like in the factory for the workers?

Who was working?Work day?Working conditions?Safety?

II. What happened to start the fire?III. Immediate Reaction of the workersIV. During the fire…what was happening?V. Problems that occurred battling the fire?VI. Aftermath

Long-lasting EffectsLong-lasting Effects

►Changed the regulation by government of business

Before – government mostly stayed away from business

Felt had no power to legislate itAFTERWARDS COULD NOT AVOID INSTITUTING LAWS TO PROTECT WORKERS

ONCE NEW YORK LEGISLATURE ENACTED SAFETY LAWS, OTHER STATES FOLLOWED SUIT

LONG-LASTING EFFECTSLONG-LASTING EFFECTS

►Workers also looked towards UNIONS to voice concern over safety and pay

Factory Commission (1911)International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union

Led a march of 100,000 to tell NY legislature to move into action and address concerns

History Repeats Itself?History Repeats Itself?

►March 25, 1990►Happy Land Social Club

(Bronx)►87 Killed (customers, not

workers)►Why? NOSprinkler

System

One Exit Door

ExitsWindows - iron bars

Fire Alarms

History Repeats ItselfHistory Repeats Itself►Sept. 3 1991►North Carolina Poultry Factory►25 Killed (workers)►Why?

EXITS

Or padlocked (to prevent theft)

Not marked well

Or blocked

Reforms into todayReforms into today

►Countless state and federal laws►Unions gathered numerous new

workers►Employers have a clear set of

guidelines that need to be followed to ensure safety of their employees

Fire Drills and instructions postedFirefighting equipment must be maintained and portable fire extinguishersFire SprinklersEmployee training

Look Around You…

Well-known SOCIAL REFORMSWell-known SOCIAL REFORMS►Additional Workplace & labor

reforms eight-hour work day eight-hour work day

improved safety & health conditions in improved safety & health conditions in factoriesfactories

workers compensation laws workers compensation laws

minimum wage lawsminimum wage laws

unionizationunionization

Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, 1913

State Social Reform: Child LaborState Social Reform: Child LaborChild Laborers in Indiana Glass Works, Midnight, Indiana. 1908

Child Laborer, Newberry, S.C. 1908

“Breaker Boys” Pennsylvania, 1911

Shrimp pickers in Peerless Oyster Co. Bay St. Louis, Miss., March 3, 1911

SOCIAL/LABOR REFORMS con’t SOCIAL/LABOR REFORMS con’t One of the most persistent causes of

Progressive Era reformers was child labor reform.

Children (ten to fifteen years old) worked in America.

The 1890 census more than one millionThe 1910 census increased to two million

Industries employed children as young as five or six to work as many as eighteen to twenty hours a day.

Why so many children?Why so many children?► Industrialization did not create child labor, but it did

contribute to the need for child labor reform. The replacement of skilled artisans by machinery and the growth of factories and mills made child labor increasingly profitable for businesses.

Why - Children cost less to employ than adults, and were paid only a fraction of what an adult worker would make (or sometimes, nothing)

about 5 pence (penny) a day or $1.50 for 16 hours of work ($25 now)

Many employers preferred hiring children because they were quick, easy to train, could fit in small places, small fingers, and were willing to work for lower wages.

►

Let’s hear about some history…Let’s hear about some history…

Camella Teoli Testifies about the 1912 Lawrence Textile Strike

►Background30,000 largely immigrant workers walked out of the Lawrence, Massachusetts, textile mills in January 1912The strike began because of unsafe working conditions in the millsAlso Massachusetts had passed a law requiring a shorter work week textile mill owners responded by reducing workers' wages

Let’s hear some history…Let’s hear some history…She went before a U.S.

Congressional hearing in March 1912.

Testified about losing her hair when it got caught in a textile machine she

was operating. Gained national

headlines—in part because

Helen Taft, the

wife of the President Taft, was there

The resulting publicity helped secure a strike victory

Where the Progressives came in…Where the Progressives came in…

►Believed that child labor was detrimental to children and to society.

Children should be: Protected from harmful environments so that they would become healthy, productive adults.

Their goals were to develop programs that would:

eliminate children's participation in industryincrease their involvement in education and extracurricular activities.

Child Labor Laws enactedChild Labor Laws enacted

►The Keating-Owen Act (1916) would have freed children from child labor only in industries that engaged in interstate commerce

Supreme Court declared law unconstitutional in 1918 on the grounds that Congress could not regulate local labor conditions

Child Labor Laws enactedChild Labor Laws enacted

►President Woodrow Wilson approved and signed into law the "Tax on Employment of Child Labor“ (1919)

This placed a 10% tax on net profits of businesses that employed children under age fourteen or made them work more than eight hours a day, six days a week.

►The Supreme Court declared this law unconstitutional.

Still a great deal of opposition to a Still a great deal of opposition to a national amendment against child labornational amendment against child labor

►Opponents labeled the proposed amendment a communist idea that government would control the nation's businesses

Yet the initial passage of bills may have had some effect on businesses

Number of working children (10 – 15) declined by almost fifty percent between 1910 and 1920.

Some laws did make it onto the booksSome laws did make it onto the books►The Smith-Hughes Act (1917)

Provided one million dollars to states that agreed to improve their public schools by providing vocational education programs.

Why?– Would offer children an alternative to

work.

►By 1929 every state had a provision banning children under fourteen from working

Keating-Owen ActKeating-Owen Act

►In February 1941 the Supreme Court overruled the 1918 decision

►As a result, businesses that shipped goods out of state had to abide by the ruling that children could only work outside of school hours and that children under eighteen were unable to work in jobs that were hazardous to their health.

Progressive Progressive Reforms todayReforms todayFor example

Child Labor Laws do not permit employees younger than 18 to work with or repair, adjust, or clean power-driven machinery like meat/deli slicers or bakery mixers

Who was he?Grew up in wealthy familyBegan his career as a journalist at the New York Evening Post. - Later became an editor of McClure's magazine (worked with other muckrakers)

- He and McClure’s took on corporate monopolies and political machines (corruption) , the awful conditions most Americans lived and worked in, the tainted food and water they ate and drank.

Lincoln SteffensThe commercial spirit is the spirit of profit, not patriotism; of

credit, not honor; of individual gain, not national prosperity; of trade and dickering, not principle. "My business is sacred," says the businessman in his heart. "Whatever prospers my business, is good; it must be. Whatever hinders it, is wrong; it must be. A bribe is bad, that is, it is a bad thing to take; but it is not so bad to give one, not if it is necessary to my business.“

~Lincoln Steffens The Shame of The Cities

Cities began to use city commissions and city managers **see later

Protect Social Welfare

► A hundred thousand people lived in rear tenements in New York City last year. Here is a room neater than the rest. The spice of hot soapsuds is added to the air already tainted with the smell of boiling cabbage, of rags and uncleanliness all about. It makes an overpowering compound.

~ How the Other Half Lives by Jacob Riis

Who was he?Social reformer, "muckraking" journalist and social documentary photographerWorked as a police reporter whose work appeared in several New York newspapers - documented the living and working conditions of the poor Let’s take a

look

Jacob Riis

**As a result of his work - NYC passed building codes to promote safety and health.

Social Welfare Reformers Social Welfare Reformers

►TargetRelieving the poverty of immigrants and other city dwellers

►Early Reform Program

Social Gospel movement

Preached salvation through service to the poorLeaders encouraged churches erected in poor communities Persuaded some business leaders to treat workers more fairly

Well-known SOCIAL REFORMSWell-known SOCIAL REFORMS►The Settlement House Movement

Community Centers in slum neighborhoods

Provided- education (ex: English classes), culture (ex: crafts, drama plays, music painting), day care

►Also the YMCA and Salvation Army took on service roles

►Way to address some of the ongoing problems of urbanization

Butler YMCA – when established?

Famous Settlement HouseFamous Settlement House

►Chicago Hull-House – Jane Addams

Jane Addams (1905)

Hull-House Complex in 1906

Background on Jane AddamsBackground on Jane Addams► Was the daughter of a well-to-do

Illinois businessmanJane often went with her father on his trips to the mills that he owned.

One day in 1867, her father had business in the town of Freeport.

The mill next to the poorest section of town.

– Rows of run-down houses crowded one beside the other

Children dressed in ragged, dirty clothing played in the streets. "Papa, why do these people live

in such horrid little houses so close together?" she asked.

"Because they have no money to live in better places," he replied.

"Well, when I grow up, I shall live in a big house…But it will not be built among the other large houses, but right in the midst of horrid little houses like these."

In 1889…Pursuing a dreamIn 1889…Pursuing a dream► Addams and her friend Ellen Gates Starr,

rented a run-down mansion that once had belonged to a man named Charles Hull.

► Location: in one of Chicago's industrial areas.

Many European immigrants lived in the neighborhood.

► Spoke little, if any, English ► Lived in crowded, dirty tenements. ► Most worked in nearby factories

earning barely enough money to feed their families.

► Addams and Starr hoped that Hull House would bring some light into these people's lives

Regarding Hull HouseRegarding Hull House

The Settlement ... is an experimental effort to aid in the solution of the social and industrial problems which are engendered by the modern conditions of life in a great city. It insists that these problems are not confined to any one portion of the city. It is an attempt to relieve, at the same time, the overaccumulation at one end of society and the destitution at the other.

~Jane Addams "20 Years at Hull House", 1910

Many services offeredMany services offered► Kindergarten class/daycare

for children left at the settlement while their mothers worked in the sweatshops

► Established the city’s first public playground, bathhouse, and public gymnasium

► Provided nutritious food for the sick

► Offered courses► Became well known

for its success in aiding American assimilation, especially with immigrant youth

Stepped up to help…Stepped up to help…► Starr and Addams

volunteered as on-call doctors when the real doctors weren't available (studied medicine)

► Acted as midwives► Saved babies from neglect► Prepared the dead for burial► Nursed the sick► Gave shelter to domestic

violence victims.

► For example, one Italian bride had lost her wedding ring and in turn was beaten by her husband for a week. She sought shelter at the settlement and it was

granted to her.

► In another case, a woman was about to give birth to an illegitimate baby, so none of the Irish nurses would touch it.

Addams and Starr stepped in and delivered the baby

Her LegacyHer Legacy► won the Nobel Peace Prize in

1931 for her work

►When she died in 1935, Hull House filled an entire city block.

It had inspired the creation of hundreds of similar houses across the U.S.

Progressive JournalismProgressive Journalism►Focus on: Corruption and social

injustice►Raise the consciousness of

America►Muckrakers

Upton Sinclair and The Jungle 1906

BackgroundBackground►Born in Baltimore►Grew up poor

though money on his mother’s side (stayed with grandparents due to mother-son relationship)

►Gave him insight into how both the rich and the poor lived

Background con’tBackground con’t► Love for reading (5 yrs old)

read every book that his mother owned for a deeper understanding of the world.

► Entered City College of New York (14 yrs old)

He wrote jokes, dime novels and magazine articles in boy's weekly

and pulp magazines to pay for his

tuition.

► He graduated in 1897 Columbia University

Major - Law, but he was more interested in writing, and he learned several languages including Spanish, German and French.

► He supported himself through college by writing boys' adventure stories and jokes

Investigative work…Investigative work…► In 1904, Sinclair spent seven

weeks in disguise, working undercover in Chicago's meatpacking plants to research his political fiction exposé

► When it was published two years later, it became a bestseller

Excerpt from Excerpt from The JungleThe Jungle

Extra:Video

Audio Online

Upton Sinclair’s Upton Sinclair’s The JungleThe Jungle Aftermath Aftermath

►Consumer ProtectionPure Food and Drug Act (1906)

Halted the sale of contaminated foods and medicines and called for truth in labeling

Meat Inspection Act (1906)The Act mandated cleaner conditions for meatpacking plants

Chicago Meatpacking Workers, Chicago Meatpacking Workers, 19051905

"A nauseating job, but it must be done"