Urban
Problems and
Public Health
By: Mitchell Mannas, Ryan Rugel,
Nick Giorgi, and Lauren Fleming
Background/Problems
● 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
Goals
● 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
Exposure and Muckraking
●
●
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
Notable Names
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
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
Strategies and Tactics
● 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
Groups Involved (Level of Involvement)
● 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
Obstacles Faced
●
●
●
●
●
●
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
Successes & Failures
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
Failures
● Sanitation and
Health problems
were not able to be
completely solved
until 1930’s, due to
lack of federal
funding