T
P
E
II U
10
M
Industrialization and imperialism changed America with cities crowded with new immigrants, awful working conditions, and failing political systems. These problems would give rise to the Progressive Movement in which the government became more involved in the lives of Americans. Throughout this era, social, political and economic issues take center stage in American lives.
C LEANING U P THE M UCK muckrakers – journalists who exposed corruption in government, business and society
Ida Tarbell – exposed the Standard Oil Company in major newspaper articles entitled The History of Standard
Oil (1903) as a corrupt, monopolistic company
Upton Sinclair – wrote The Jungle (1906) which was meant to detail the horrible working conditions that took place inside Chicago’s meat factories, but gets more interest in the details of horrible conditions of food preparation
- responsible for getting the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act passed in 1906 after
President Roosevelt read the book
Social Issues
Jacob Riis – wrote How the Other Half Lives (1890) which describes the conditions in the tenements through numerous photographs that were taken in these living quarters
brought to everyone’s attention that half a million people living in the slums that had no private baths
shocked people that horrible living conditions existed in the cities along with such wealth an excess
Triangle Shirtwaist Company (1911) – a fire breaks out in a ten-story textile-building killing over 140 women workers
- the building had no sprinkler system, one fire escape that collapsed, and many of the exits were locked from the outside
- led to new laws regulating working conditions, and fire codes settlement houses – houses set up by richer middle-class people in which the middle-class resident would live with and help poor residents

mostly immigrants
- immigrants used these to help adjust and assimilate into American society with Hull House being one of the most famous settlement houses founded in Chicago by Jane Addams
Jane Addams – opened a settlement house (Hull House) in Chicago
- created meaningful work opportunities for educated women and provided housing for the poor
Florence Kelly – worked to improve the lives of children and women becoming one of the leaders in getting child labor laws passed
Political Issues
Lincoln Steffen – wrote The Shame of the Cities (1904), which unmasked the corrupt alliance between big business and government
Robert Lafollette – governor of Wisconsin who pushed for political reforms on the state level to overpower the party bosses

“ The only way to beat the bosses is to keep the people informed” direct primaries – system in which the people choose candidates for elections rather than party officials
(political machines) secret ballot - voting method in which a voter's choices are confidential to insure bribery and intimidation don’t influence the voter
More Power to Voters initiative - is a bill that is launched by the citizens rather than legislators referendum - is where citizens would vote to approve an initiative recall - a procedure for removing a public official from office before his term was up

A
FRICAN
A
MERICANS
: A
BSENT FROM
P
ROGRESSIVISM
During the Progressive Era, civil rights for African American were still greatly ignored as discrimination against African
Americans still continued in many places, especially the South.
Laws limiting African American freedoms: disenfranchised – having your right of suffrage ( vote ) revoked literacy test – testing the literacy of potential voters before allowing them to vote poll tax – pay a hefty tax to vote grandfather clause – if your grandfather could or couldn’t do something the same applied to you
“
Jim Crow laws
” – laws forcing separation of the races in public places.
- these laws were enforced through intimidation and crimes such as lynching (hanging)
Ida B. Wells – led an anti-lynching crusade and called on the federal government to take action
- wrote A Red Record , which recorded race lynching in America
- African Americans looked to the courts to safeguard their rights

it fails
Plessey v. Ferguson – ruled that “separate but equal” did not violate the 14 th Amendment

upheld the “Jim Crow” laws of the era
AFRICAN A MERICAN LEADERS
Booker T. Washington – believed the way to equality was through vocational education and economic success
- founded the Tuskegee Institute to teach these skills
- he accepted social separation
Atlanta Compromise Speech (1895) - blacks should accept the treatment of Southern whites
W.E.B. Dubois – supported political equality for African Americans believing blacks should use the courts to fight for their rights and that education was meaningless without equality
Niagara Movement (1905) – a movement to stop social injustices such as segregation and disenfranchisement of
African Americans who led to the creation of the NAACP
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) – political/legal organization that used the courts and legal system to fight against social injustices and winning victories for African -
Despite the efforts of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B Dubois, blacks made little success in the late 19 th and early 20 th centuries, as African Americans began moving to northern cities in search of jobs to escape the poverty and discrimination in the South in an event known as, the “ Great Migration.”