Chicago: 1890 to 1915

 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.

 Problems:  Urban slums  Poverty  Dangerous working conditions  Corruption in politics  Political machines  Exploitive monopolies

 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.

 Promoted social justice concerns  Faith in government intervention in society  “Gospel of efficiency”  Order and organization

 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

Muckrakers and Upton Sinclair

 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

 Began as a journalist for a socialist newspaper  Came to Chicago in 1905 to investigate the Union Stock Yards and the meatpacking industry

 Expose the meatpacking industry  Expose the exploitative relationship between owners and employees  Intended for his work to support socialism

 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

 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.

 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.

 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.

 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

 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”

 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.