Progressive Movement and Urban Reform
Chicago: 1890 to 1915
Setting the stage
Between 1890 and 1915, the Progressive movement hit America, seeking reform in both national and local politics.
America was in transition from a country of farmers and artisans to a country defined by immigration, industrialization, and urbanization.
Chicago in transition
Problems: Urban slums Poverty Dangerous working
conditions Corruption in
politics Political machines Exploitive
monopolies
Progressivism
Wanted to address these problems of urban centers like Chicago
Many progressive reformers were well-educated and well-informed middle-class Americans, including many women, journalists, small business owners, and college professors.
Common elements of Progressives Promoted social
justice concerns Faith in
government intervention in society
“Gospel of efficiency”
Order and organization
Progressive beliefs Good government should be honest,
efficient, and managed by professional public servants.
Progressive reform sought: Moral reform▪ Get rid of prostitution and gambling and those who
allowed it Urban political reform▪ Get rid of corruption, bribery, patronage, and fraud
Civic reform▪ Make Chicago a safer, cleaner, better place to live
Local writers and ExposésMuckrakers and Upton Sinclair
Muckrakers
Progressive movement fueled by writers and journalists who were called muckrakers.
Exposed the dirty, seedy, and unethical happenings of life in America
Brought about a feeling of moral outrage
Upton Sinclair
Began as a journalist for a socialist newspaper
Came to Chicago in 1905 to investigate the Union Stock Yards and the meatpacking industry
Sinclair’s task
Expose the meatpacking industry
Expose the exploitative relationship between owners and employees
Intended for his work to support socialism
Sinclair’s book The novel, The Jungle,
published in 1906 Books tells the story of
an immigrant who comes to America and works in the Union Stock Yards of Chicago Main character: Jurgis
Rudkus gets crushed by the vicious capitalist system.
Jurgis converts to socialism
Response to the Jungle
Readers did not remember this book for Sinclair’s argument for socialism but rather for: exposing the unimaginable filth that could be found on a daily basis at meatpacking plants.
Exposed the meatpacking industry for packaging contaminated, spoiled, unclean, and occasionally doctored meat.
Roosevelt Connection!
President Theodore Roosevelt began to push for new federal laws Health standards on
the meat packing industry
Passed the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906.
Local writing
British writer and reformer William T. Stead came to Chicago for the Columbian Exposition.
He was appalled by the rampant vice he found here. He told of what he saw in his 1894 book, If Christ Came to Chicago.
If Christ Came to Chicago Stead described
Chicago as a city full of materialistic young men.
Called local society women selfish and lazy
He believed Jesus would not like Chicago
What the book exposed
Stead was appalled by Chicago’s famed “Levee,” known then as the “most notorious red-light district in the nation”– Jon C. Teaford 200 brothels, countless saloons, dance
halls, pawn shops and gambling clubs
The Everleigh Club: a local institution, a “classy and respectable brothel”
Effects of the book?
The Chicago Tribune called it “a directory of sin”
Sold 10,000 copies locally right away Generated publicity but little in the
way of actual reform Most Chicago politicians avoided moral
reform and ideas of the Progressives Regulation of vice, confined to the
boundaries of the Levee.