Progressive Era

Progressive Era

1. Working Conditions

   • The Triangle Shirtwaist fire caused 75 injuries and 146 deaths. A year before the same women that were injured or died in the fire took a strike for better safety and sanitation. However, the owner said it was too expensive.
     • In the eyes of industrialism men and women's lives were looked at as cheap, and since so many did the same job, the death of many did not seem significant.

2. Upton Sinclair

   • He published a novel in 1906 titled "The Jungle" which dramatized the experiences of a Lithium immigrant family that lived in Chicago
     • Purpose was to exploit the brutal labor in meatpacking and and lay bare the enitre process of industrial food processing.
       • Led to the passage of the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906.
         • Solution to the unsanitary and unsafe conidtions that occurred from the growing invisibility of slaughter houses and livestock production.

3. Jacob Riis

   • A New Your City journalist that published "How the Other Half Lives" which was a scornful accusations of the living and working conditions in the city's slums.
     • It was a vivid description as well as obtaining photographed documentation of poverty, and it gave readers an insight on urban poverty.
     • Led to housing reform in New York and other cities.
     • Showed society that it had some responsibility in relieving poverty

4. Women's Rights

   • Women's clubs were formed beginning in the 1890s and different groups focused n different aspects of equality for women. Some focused on intellectual development, philanthropic activities, and some worked through churches.
   • Jane Addams
     • Attended Rockford Female Seminary, and she wanted to make the world a better place.
       • Believed well-educated women of means lacked practical strategies for engaging everyday reform.
     • Founded the Hull House in Chicago after returning to the US from England.
       • Workers provided services for their neighbors by facilitating a nursery, kindergarten, classes for parents and clubs for children, and organizing social and cultural events for the community.
       • exposed conditions in local sweatshops and supports the organization for workers.
     • Pressured politics and worked with Kelley in order to petition legislators to pass anti-sweatshop legislation.
       • limited the hours of work for women and children to eight hours per day.
     • First women to give a nominating speech at a major party convention
   • National American Suffrage Association
     • A leading suffrage organization that was vastly composed of middle-class and upper-class women.
     • Focused on passing state voting right laws and on the ratification of an ammendment of the Us constitution
   • Alice Paul
     • Led the National Women's Party, which was a more militant suffrage organization
       • Demanded voting rights and organized marches and protests that mobilized thousands of women.
   • President Woodrow Wilson declared that he supported women's suffrage ammendment
   • Nineteenth Ammendment
     • Women everywhere got the right to vote

5. Theodore Roosevelt

   • A reform-minded Republican whose youthful energy and confrontational politics captivated the nation
   • Pushed for antitrust legislation and regulations, he argued that courts should not be responsible for breaking up the trusts
   • More interesting in regulating corporations versus breaking them up
     • He believed courts were slow and unpredictable
     • His successor William Howard Taft believed in court-oriented trust busting
       • During his four years in office he doubled the number of monopoly breakups that happened during the seven years that Roosevelt was in office

6. Woodrow . Wilson

   • He was the Democratic Party nominee, and he believed in small-business incentives other than Roosevelt or Taft's beliefs because he believed that his way could make individual companies increase their competitive chances.
   • When he won election he began to lean more on the side of Roosevelt's approach
     • Signed the Clayton Anti-Trust Act of 1914
       • Enhanced the Sherman Act, regulating mergers and price discrimination, protecting labor's access to collective bargaining, and related strategies of picketing, boycotting, and protessting
         • Sherman Antitrust Act was passed in 1890 and it aimed to limit anticompetitive practices. It also declared that not all monopolies were illegal.

7. Environmentalism

   • Reformers were addressing the issues that the urban poor faced, and they were also doing environmental work.
   • Many issues were handled through this topic such as sanitation and health, working conditions, and the investigation of working hazards as well as bodily harm
   • It was the progressive's commitment to public services, but on a deeper level because their goal was to intersect communities and their material environment. Also, they wanted to highlight the urgency of urban environment concerns.
   • John Muir
     • A naturalist, a writer, and the founder of the Sierra Club. He used it to appeal to the "Gods of the Mountain" in his defense in the valley and its pristine condition
     • Took a wider view on what people needed. Also, he was no the side of preservation and wanted to set aside pristine land for their spiritual and aesthetic value.
   • Gifford Pinchot
     • He believed in conservation and taking each part of the land and using its resources in order to serve people.
     • He is the father of American Forestry and a key player in federal management of national forests
   • National wildlife refuge
     • banned to shipment of species killed illegally across state lines

8. Immigrant Living Conditions

   • Housing was unsanitary, unsafe, and overcrowded. People also died of diseases.
   • Many lived in tenements, small apartments, and these facilities lacked indoor plumbing. Also, many families lived in one room. The population in cities grew cause them and the tenements to become overcrowded. This led to disease, crime, and alcohol use.
   • Jane Addams, Upton Sinclair, and Jacob Riis fought for better living conditions for immigrants. Sinclair wrote a book exposing these conditions, Addams founded the Hull house which provided services for people, and Riis documented the living and working conditions of the poor which got people's attention.

9. Racial Discrimination

   • In many ways reform seemed to move African Americans farther from American public life. Especially in the south were racial violence increased and races were separated.
     • States were finding ways to go around the Fifteenth Amendment and keep African Americans from voting
   • The Southern government was doing everything they could to keep segregation and other racial practices. However, the Supreme Court was counteracting this by trying to help the African Americans in ways such as the fourteenth amendment.
   • Booker T. Washington
     • He was exposed to slavery in early life. However, he got into Hampton University in Virginia and used his education to create a facility that would educate African Americans
       • This is the Tuskegee Institute located in Alabama
         • Provided industrial education and vocal training
     • became leading spokesperson for black Americans at the turn of the twentieth century
   • NAACP
     • It is the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and it was established by Du Bois. . It eliminated race-based discrimination and ensured political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all people.

10. Big business

    • They were a hug part of the American economy and government. They provided jobs to several thousands of people and they sold products across the country in large quantities.
    • Working conditions were very poor and led to downfall in the country