Urban Problems and Public Health By: Mitchell Mannas, Ryan Rugel, Nick Giorgi, and Lauren Fleming

●Low income families resided to overcrowded tenement houses ○Generally 4-5 families per floor of the house ○Ideal conditions for diseases ●Waste was a major problem ○People threw their trash into the streets ○Personal waste disposal ●Local politics in shambles ○Corruption ■Rockefeller’s ruthless business tactics ■Medicine fraud ○Inefficiencies ■Meat packing plants were unsanitary Background/Problems

●Main goal was to challenge political machines about poor urban conditions ○Address the need for necessities such as a clean, plentiful water supply ○Disease was prevalent ●Ultimately wanted a change in policies of local politics rather than eradicate the entire political system ○Expand the power of appointed administrators ○Revise city charters to strengthen mayoral power ○Wanted to make urban reform a non partisan and non political issue Goals

●Photojournalist Jacob Riis’s book How the Other Half Lives became a bestseller o Eye-opener to the public about the overcrowded and desolate conditions in impoverished neighborhoods o Advocated for stricter building codes ●Robert Hunter’s book Poverty continued the ideas of How the Other Half Lives o Based his observations on the slums of Chicago and New York o Sought to describe not only the problems, but to explain how such problems would continue to grow unless the public could adequately address the issue o Made the bold claim that 10 million Americans were still "underfed, underclothed, and poorly housed"—some 13% of the U.S. population Exposure and Muckraking

Good Guys ●Business and professional elite who worked to create city commissions and city managers o Frederic C. Howe-City Beautiful movement ●Women’s benevolent societies and middle class evangelical Protestants who worked for reform o Those who worked in settlement houses such as Florence Kelley and Jane Addams Notable Names Bad guys ●Party machines who failed to provide adequate city services o William Tweed and Tammany Hall ●Corporations who robbed their workers of decent enough wages to survive o John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould ●Politicians who defended business and saw exposure journalism as “muckraking” and impeding economic success o Theodore Roosevelt

●Muckraking Journalism ●Strikes and Rallies ●Restructure city government o Appoint board of commissioners ●Initiative o Subject for legislation ●Referendum o Submission of a law to a direct popular for for approval or rejection ●Recall o Remove official by popular vote Strategies and Tactics

●Urban Reformers ●Muckraking Journalists o Exposing economic, social, and political evils o Drew attention of millions in  Urban poverty, political corruption, plight of industrial workers, and immoral business practices ●Businesses and professional elites o Biggest boosters of structural reforms in urban gov. o Pushed for board of commissioners to replace mayor-council ●Progressive Politicians o Focused on human problems in industrial city ●Women’s benevolent societies Groups Involved (Level of Involvement)

●Dirty streets full of trash and sewage ●Unsanitary conditions in food processing plants ●Dangerous factory conditions ●Corrupt City and State Governments ●Contaminated food ●Lack of medical assistance to help fight infectious diseases Obstacles Faced

Successes ●Improved sewer lines and cleaned up the streets ●Added Parks ●Restrictions in the amount of hours a person could work ●Ban on child labor ●Tenement house act of 1901 ●Meat act of 1906 Successes & Failures Failures ●Sanitation and Health problems were not able to be completely solved until 1930’s, due to lack of federal funding