CS 14: I can…evaluate the success of progressive reforms in addressing problems associated with industrial capitalism, urbanization & political corruption.

Progressive Reform Movement: What? Identify and Solve problems associated with the Industrial Revolution (1890s-1920s) Why? Social, Political, and Economic disparity. How? Get Public attention Use the government to fix those problems Who? Middle to upper-middle class Urban/city dwellers High educated Lots were women 2

Who got them started: Muckrakers Journalists that investigated and exposed problems Ida Tarbell Upton Sinclair Lincoln Steffen’s Jacob Riis “Why can’t we apply scientific methods to solving societal problems?”

Progressives – Attacked Problems in 4 Areas. Workplace & Cities Environment Political Reforms Social Reforms In Three different Locations: National Reforms State Reforms Local Reforms

And it became a reform movement: Workplace and Cities Problems Reforms/Reformers Slum Life Workplace Tenement House Act = bathroom + courtyard Hull House = Immigrant education and shelter. Provided education, job training, day care, medical care to poor immigrants National Child Labor Committee= limited work hours for children Workers compensation

And it became a reform movement: Consumer Protection Problems Reforms/Reformers Unsafe Products Monopolies Meat-Inspection Act Pure Food & Drug Act Sherman Anti-Trust Act – attempted to limit the growth of monopolies. This is the Start of weakening our Laissez-faire economy

And it became a reform movement: Environment Problems Reforms/Reformers Landscape Natural Resources Pollution Sierra Club—worked on preservation = the protection of wilderness US. Forest Service, National Wildlife Refuge System, National Park System— Conservation = limited use of resources in urban development

And it became a reform movement: Political Reforms Reforms/Reformers Political Problems 1. Corrupt Government Political Machines and Bosses Local/State Federal Civil Service Reform & Pendleton Act = limit patronage and guidelines for hiring gov’t workers Recall= process to remove elected official Initiative = giving citizens power to propose laws Referendum – giving citizens power to vote on proposed laws

And it became a reform movement: Social Reforms Social Problems Reforms/Reformers Social Class African Americans Women Families (see next slide also) NAACP- fought to end racial discrimination through the courts & protect voting rights NAWSA + 19th Amendment (women suffrage)

And it became a reform movement: Other Family Reforms Social Problems Reforms/Reformers WCTU - Women’s Christian Temperance Union Drinking 18th Amendment - Prohibited making/selling alcohol (Prohibition) Carry Nation Temperance supporter Carry Nation speaks out against alcohol holding a Bible and a hatchet. Nation was famous for taking a hatchet to bar fixtures and stock

Political Reforms

Failure of the Progressive Movement White, middle class reform Women, blacks, and farmers Divided Leadership Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois

“Bosses of the Senate” What does it mean?

The Jungle, Upton Sinclair: It was only when the whole ham was spoiled that it came into the department of Elzbieta. Cut up by the two-thousand-revolutions-a-minute flyers, and mixed with half a ton of other meat, no odor that ever was in a ham could make any difference. There was never the least attention paid to what was cut up for sausage; there would come all the way back from Europe old sausage that had been rejected, and that was moldy and white - it would be dosed with borax and glycerine, and dumped into the hoppers, and made over again for home consumption. 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 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 the 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. This is no fairy story and no joke; the meat would be shoveled into carts, and the man who did the shoveling would not trouble to lift out a rat even when he saw one - there were things that went into the sausage in comparison with which a poisoned rat was a tidbit.