The Progressive Era (1890-1914)
• A series of social reform efforts that aimed
to correct the injustices in American life.
• Unequal distribution of wealth
– small upper class with a lot of $, huge lower class
with little money
– Greed, contempt and corruption were
characteristics of capitalists
• Growing middle class takes notice
– Cities overcrowded, crime ridden and corrupt
– Unfair, dangerous working conditions
– Trusts and monopolies dominated business world.
President Roosevelt
• President Theodore Roosevelt would lead
the Republican Party and help reform
corruption
• Against monopolies
• Against corrupt businessmen
Emergence of Social Gospel
• This philosophy basically said
– People (strong or weak) had a moral
obligation to help those in need.
• Muckrakers
– Journalists who wrote detailed accounts of
corruption in America that violated widely held
views (working and living conditions, political
corruption, etc).
– The term refers to a person who is only
concerned with raking muck or filth.
Famous Muckrakers
• Lincoln Steffens – published in McClure’s
– In The Shame of Cities (1904), he revealed how corrupt city
politicians of his time were.
• Ida Tarbell - focused on big business
– Exposed John D. Rockefeller’s illegal and unfair business
practices in a series of articles, and then a book, History of the
Standard Oil Company (1904).
• Frank Norris
– Wrote The Octopus (1901) which dealt with the struggle of
California wheat growers against a monopolistic railroad.
• Upton Sinclair –
– The Jungle (1906) exposed unhealthy conditions in Chicago’s
meatpacking plants.
Upton Sinclair
• Wrote for a Socialist
newspaper
• Spent seven weeks
undercover working in
a meat plant
• Primary sources
• Terrible wages
• New immigrants
• Horrific/unsanitary
conditions
The Jungle
• “…there [came] from Europe old sausage that had
been rejected…moldy and white - it would be dosed
with borax and glycerin…and made over again for
home consumption…meat…tumbled out on the floor,
in the dirt and sawdust, where the workers had
trampled and spit…meat [was] stored in rooms, and
the water from leaky roofs would drip over it, and
thousands of rats…race about on it…a man could
sweep off handfuls of the dried dung of rats [who were
then poisoned]; they would die, and then rats, bread,
and meat would go into the hoppers together…there
were things that went into the sausage in comparison
with which a poisoned rat was a tidbit.”
• President Theodore Roosevelt read the book and was
disgusted!
• Results: Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and
Drug Act were passed.
Meat Inspection Act 1906
• Prevent adulterated or misbranded meat
and meat products from being sold as food
and to ensure that meat and meat
products are slaughtered and processed
under sanitary conditions.
• Foreign meat inspected as well
• USDA
Meat Inspection Act Results:
• Mandatory inspection of livestock before slaughter
(cattle, sheep, goats, equines, and swine);
• Mandatory postmortem inspection of
every carcass;
• Sanitary standards established
for slaughterhouses and meat processing plants;
and
• Authorized U.S. Department of Agriculture ongoing
monitoring and inspection of slaughter and
processing operations.
Pure Food and Drug Act 1905
• An Act for preventing the manufacture,
sale, or transportation of adulterated or
misbranded or poisonous or deleterious
foods, drugs, medicines, and liquors, and
for regulating traffic therein, and for other
purposes.
• Truthful labels of what is in the product
• Ingredients, meat, preservatives…
Others reformers you already know
• Jacob Riis –(1890) How the Other Half Lives
– Published realistic photos of the urban slums
• Jane Addams –(1889) Hull House
– Settlement houses used to help immigrants
adjust to American life. They offered help with
education, the arts, and music.
Triangle Shirtwaist Company
Fire New York City 1911
Louis Waldman -Witness
• The Triangle Waist Company was on fire and several
hundred workers were trapped. Horrified and helpless, the
crowds — I among them — looked up at the burning
building, saw girl after girl appear at the reddened
windows, pause for a terrified moment, and then leap to
the pavement below, to land as mangled, bloody pulp.
This went on for what seemed a ghastly eternity.
Occasionally a girl who had hesitated too long was licked
by pursuing flames and, screaming with clothing and hair
ablaze, plunged like a living torch to the street. Life nets
held by the firemen were torn by the impact of the falling
bodies.The emotions of the crowd were indescribable.
Women were hysterical, scores fainted; men wept as, in
paroxysms of frenzy, they hurled themselves against the
police lines.
Street of Death!
Disaster Improves Workers Rights
• Triangle Shirtwaist Company Fire New York City 1911
– 146 workers died (129 women 17 men) from a fire in a
garment sweatshop; most were immigrants
– Fire exits were locked to prevent unauthorized breaks
– Many women leaped to their death, died of fire burns
or smoke inhalation
• Results
–
–
–
–
–
New fire codes for public buildings with fire exits
Sparked International Ladies Garment Worker’s Union
More rights for workers
State labor departments (monitor unsafe labor)
Owners escaped, were tried and acquitted of charges