Do Now: Create a T chart showing the pros and cons of industrialization.
OBJECTIVES: EXAMINE THE
CHANGES IN AMERICA AT THE
TURN OF THE CENTURY
Westward Development
Industrialization
Urbanization
A NEW AMERICA
Westward Expansion
Causes
Effects
• Manifest Destiny
• Search for new land
• Rumors of riches
• Native American resistance,
devastation
• Creation of Infrastructure
• Access to Natural Resources
• Hardships in the new
territories
Industrialization/Mechanizat
ion
Inventions / Innovations
Modernization
Increased output
Lower prices
Growth of American Empire
Labor Issues
Monopolization
Economic Disparities
Transformation of America
Urbanization
New Urban Lifestyle
Mass Migration
Mass Immigration
New Challenges w/o Solutions
Culture Clashes (Rural/Urban)
Political changes
Do Now:
What can you infer from
these graphs?
Railroads
 At the center of economic growth and change
in America
 During the late 1800s, the amount of RR
track, freight, and passengers more than
doubled.
 Single largest employer
 Led to the rise of the steel industry
 732000 tons in 1978 to 10188000 by 1900
Factories
Blast Furnaces
Bessemer Process
Benefits of the RR
 Employment
 Sharp increase in GDP
 Time Zones
 The US Attorney General: Need Not Change
 Easier to travel
 Cheaper and Faster Shipping
 Helped increase factory production (raw materials)
 Mail Order Catalogs
 Eventually helped labor rights movement
Shortcomings of the RR
 Corruption
 Industry leaders found ways to take advantage of
the farmers
 Shipping Prices and Control of Grain Elevators
 Treatment of workers was awful
 1/400 died
 1/26 major injury
 ¼ of all US Steel (Pittsburgh) died
 Growing Socioeconomic Gap in US
Railroad and Grain Elevator
1860
1890
ROBBER BARONS
+-+-+-+-+-+-
Carnegie, Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Gould, Fisk, Frick Duke and
Morgan
One View
Filthy Rich and Livin’ it Up
 Railroads—Vanderbilt
 Steel—Carnegie
 Rockefeller—Oil
 Duke—Tobacco
 Morgan—Banking
Public Perception– Outrage
 Corruption included
 Bribing congressmen
 Often had more political power than congressmen
 Manipulating Stock Prices
 Bought and sold stocks to drive prices up and down hurting their investors as well
as those of other companies
 Exploiting Workers
 Horrid working conditions with low pay
 Ruining Competition
 Building enormous trusts that squashed the competition
Consequences- Good and Bad
Sherman Antitrust Act- Senator Sherman
 Attempt at regulating Trusts--Ineffective
“Every contract, combination in the form of trust or
otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade
or commerce among the several states is
hereby declared to be illegal”
Failed to address the issue

Out of 8 cases brought before the court regarding this act, 7 were
won by the corporations.

One case stated that manufacturing was not considered trade or
commerce therefore did not apply
Factories and Factory
Mechanization
 Positives
 Electricity
 From Nil to 1/3 of all Factories in the late 1900s began using
electric power (steam prior)
 Machines took skilled labor’s place
 What implications might this have
 GDP Increased
 Negatives
 Safety
 Pollution
A Better Life or Growing
pains
Streetcar
What are some of advantages and disadvantages of technological
revolutions
THINK ABOUT
Do Now: Who, what, where, when, why
 It has been well said that the modern city is a stronghold of
industrialism quite as the feudal city was a stronghold of militarism,
but the modern cities fear no enemies and rivals from without and
their problems of government are solely internal. Affairs for the most
part are going badly in these great new centres, in which the quicklycongregated population has not yet learned to arrange its affairs
satisfactorily. Unsanitary housing, poisonous sewage, contaminated
water, infant mortality, the spread of contagion, adulterated food,
impure milk, smoke-laden air, ill-ventilated factories, dangerous
occupations, juvenile crime, unwholesome crowding, prostitution
and drunkenness are the enemies which the modern cities must face
and overcome, would they survive. Logically their electorate should
be made up of those who can bear a valiant part in this arduous
contest, those who in the past have at least attempted to care for
children, to clean houses, to prepare foods, to isolate the family from
moral dangers; those who have traditionally taken care of that side of
life which inevitably becomes the subject of municipal consideration
and control as soon as the population is congested…
Herbert Croly's The Promise of
American Life


New Philosophy about
government’s responsibility to
address the new issues
The challenge confronting early
twentieth-century America,
according to Croly, was to respond
to the problems that had
accompanied the transformation of
America from a rural, agricultural
society into an urban industrial one.
 Is the
government
responsible for
solving
economic,
political and
social issues?
Progressivism in Government

Filled with faith in the power of
government, Progressives launched
reform in the areas public health,
housing, urban planning and design,
parks and recreation, workplace
safety, workers' compensation,
pensions, insurance, poverty relief,
and health care.
The Gilder Lehrman Institute of
American History
Who were the Progressives?
 Many middle class protestants
 Women such as Jane Addams and Florence Kelley
 Fundamentalists such as Walter Rauschenbusch and
William Jennings Bryan
 Writers (Muckrakers) for the new and popular magazines
such as McClure's, Everybody's, Pearson's, Cosmopolitan,
and Collier's
 Lincoln Steffens, Upton Sinclair and Ida Tarbel
 Authored articles exposing the evils of American society—political
corruption, stock market manipulation, fake advertising, vice, impure
food and drugs, racial discrimination, and lynching
 Socialists led by Eugene Debs
 Politicians such as Roosevelt, La Follette, Wilson
 African Americans such as Wells, Dubois, Washington
Issues Addressed by
Progressives
1.
2.
3.
4.
Social
Moral
Economic
Political
Examples

Child Labor

City issues

Labor issues

Immigrant Culture

Corruption in Government

Drinking

African American Lynching and Racism

Industry Monopolization / Trusts

Note: Some of these issues overlap of
course
The Underlying Philosophies
1. The Federal Government should play a key
role in solving problems

The nations new industrial/urban character
requires regulation
2. The church should play a role in reestablish
morals in American society– Social Gospel

Believe most problems stem from the loss of
Christianity
Muckrakers
Exposing these Issues
 Popular magazines
became a new trend.
 Journalists began
using these as a
vehicle to expose
corruption
 Results were powerful

Term coined by T.R.
Muckrakers
 Upton Sinclair–
Novel– The Jungle
 Lincoln Steffens– The
Shame of the Cities
 Ida Tarbell– The
History of the
Standard Oil
Company– 19 part
expose in McClure's
 Jacob Riis– How the
Other Half Lives
Settlement Houses
An Their Supporters
 Daughter of rich banker /
politician
 Visits Toynbee Hall, A settlement
house in London
 Moves into Hull House in Chicago
with Ellen Starr
 Together they Fought for
 Child labor restrictions, sanitization
of city, 8-hour work day, women’s
suffrage, protection for immigrants
and better working conditions
 Author and Nobel Peace Prize Winner
Jane Addams
Children Playing in the Hull
House
Hull House + ~400 Other
Settlement Houses…
 Worked to assist urban
poor, especially
immigrants, children and
women by:
 Providing services such
as education and
domestic training
 Child care
 Entertainment
 Social clubs,
playgrounds,
reading groups,
orchestra, etc.
 Health Care
 Worked to solve bigger
problems such as:
 Child Labor
 Prostitution
 City corruption
 City renewal
 Educational practices
 Women’s Suffrage
Challenges and Solutions
The New Immigrant
Problem
 “The Blight of the City”
 1900-1910 8.2 million immigrants
 Seen as uneducated, dirty and
uncivilized
 Most were Catholics, peasants
 Most had darker skin then earlier





immigrants
Lived in squalid conditions
Drinkers
Sometimes anarchists
Seen as morally deficient
Took jobs
Solution
 Restrict immigration

1921 and 1924 immigration
quotas (National Origins Act)
 1921—2% based on 1910
 1924—2%based on 1890
 Assimilate the immigrants
 Some believed this impossible
 Jane Addams believed
immigrants could share their
culture but needed refinement
 The New Colossus
 Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
 With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
 Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
 A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
 Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
 Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
 Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
 The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
 "Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
 With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
 Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
 The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
 Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
 I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
Women’s Views
 Progressive women did not like that many
immigrant women turned to prostitution
 Mann Act 1910– Cannot transport women over state lines for
“immoral purposes”
 Allowed government to interfere with private life
 Jack Johnson arrested for transporting his secretary across state
lines even though it was consensual.
 Immigrant men spend free time in saloons
tainting their moral fibers and spending the little
money they made.
 Immigrants are the fuel for the Machine Bosses
Immigration in America
Number of Immigrants
1820
8,385
1830
23,322
1840
84,066
1850
369,980
1860
153,640
1870
387,203
1880
457,257
1890
455,302
1900
448,572
1910
1,041,570
1920
430,001
1930
241,700
1940
70,756
1950
249,187
Views of the Newcomers
 What class of our citizens most strenuously resist the
moral restrains of the community.... who among our
population give unrestricted and unregulated license to
the ten thousand drinking places in the city, which are
the chief receptacles of drunkenness, debauchery,
villainy, and disease? It is the residuum or dregs of four
millions of European immigrants, including paupers,
felons, and convicts that have landed at this port within
the last twenty years.
Why So Many?
 Escape from poverty in their home country
 “The streets of America are paved with gold.”
 Italians faced poverty and hardship
 Jews escaping persecution in Russia
 Pogroms- massacres of Jews
 Response by Czar- push Jewish into designated
neighborhoods.
Voyage
 Steamship took 2-3 weeks.
 Most in steerage (open lower section of ship)
No privacy- Very Unsanitary
 1/3 returned home after earning $
 1890-1920 10 million
 Italians Greeks Slavs Jews and Armenians
 70% came through New York City
Italians on a ship deck
Heading into NY
Artist Depiction
Entry and Settlement
 Immigrants were examined
for diseases
 If diseased then
quarantined or
deported
 Settled near others from their
country
 Ghettos were densely settled
 Restrictive Covenants
(agreements among
homeowners to keep certain
people from renting or buying)
Asian Immigration
 Chinese helped build railroad in the mid
1800s
 After paying passage they settled and worked
side by side with the general population.
 Chinese worked for lower wages upsetting
labor unions
 Scientific fallacies showed Asians as being an
inferior race.
Building the Railroad
Other Immigrants
 Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882
 Prevented the immigration of new Chinese. Those
who had already established residency were allowed
to come and go.
 Japanese also faced restriction
 Segregated schools in California were outlawed due to
an American-Japanese agreement
 Web Alien Land Law banned alien Asians from owning
farmland
 Mexican Immigrants
 Hired as cheap labor to work in mines and farms in the
southwest.
 The immigration restrictions placed on European
immigrants in 1921 (Immigration Restriction Act) led
to an abundance of jobs which led to a huge influx of
Mexican immigrants.
Immigrants and the Expanding
City
 Most immigrants settled in cities
 Growth due to transportation, elevators,
tenements, factory jobs, mechanization of
farming.
 Population growth due in large part to influx
of immigrants.
Vegetable Stand
Bocce Ball
The System
 Politicians hired friends (spoils
system)
 City officials would accept
bribes in return for contracts
 Links to org. Crime
 Elected officials would
establish a “Machine” which
would guarantee their
continued position
 Provided immigrants with jobs,
fuel, food, etc in return for votes
 Wide-Spread Election Fraud
Corruption
Nast’s Cartoons
Cartoon 2

What tells in holdin your grip on your district is to go right down among the poor families
and help them. I've got a regular system for this. If there's a fire in Ninth or Tenth or
Eleventh Avenue, for example, any hour of the day or night, I'm usually there with some of
my election district captains as soon as the fore engines. If a family is burned out I don't ask
them if they are Republicans or Democrats, and I don't refer them to the Charity
Organization Society, which would investigate their case in a month or two and decide if
they are worthy of help about the time they are dead from starvation. I just get quarters for
them, buy clothes for them if their clothes were all burned up, and fix them up until they get
things runnin' again. It's philanthropy, but it's politics too - mighty good politics. Who can
tell me how many votes one of those fires brings me? The poor are the most grateful people
in the world, and, let me tell you, they have more friends in their neighborhoods than the
rich have in theirs...

Another thing, I can always get a deserving man a job. I make it a point to keep track of jobs,
and it seldom happens that I don't have a few up my sleeve ready for use.

I hear a young feller that's proud of his voice... I ask him to join our Glee Club. He comes up
and sings, and he's a follower of Plunkitt for life. Another young feller gains a reputation as
a baseball player in a vacant lot. I bring him into our baseball club. That fixes him. You'll find
him working for my ticket at the polls next election

I rope them all in by givin' them opportunities to show off themselves off. I don't trouble
them with political arguments.

--George Washington Plunkitt, Politician, New York, 1889
Benefits of the
Machine
 The other side of the
argument:
 Provided services for
immigrants




Job search
Lawyers
Fuel, food, clothes
Etc.
 Built and maintained
infrastructure
 Employed immigrants
Shutting down the City Machines
 City Commission Plan
 Established a commission:
 Each member would be in
charge of a certain dept.
 Based on scientific
management
 Consequences to the City
Commission Plan
 Voting done on city-wide level
instead of by ward
 Only those with $ could gain
support through campaigning
 Usually in smaller cities
 Civil Service Examinations
 Introduced to award based on
qualifications rather than
association
 Required to gain entry into
political position
 End Party-Based Election
 Prevented candidates for running
based on party
 Helped to prevent party
dominance
 From Private to Public Owned
 Utilities
 Transportation
 By 1915 2/3 of all cities had city
owned utilities
Solutions at the State Level
 Corruption (much like that of the
cities) led to:
 Labor laws
 Direct Primaries– People elect
 Child labor

 Minimum wage






representatives
17th Amendment of the
constitution—Direct Election of
Senators
Referendum—Direct ballot
question to veto a law to be voted
on
Initiative– Direct ballot question to
make a law
Recall– Ability to remove elected
official from office.
Personal Registration Laws
Secret Ballots
Non-citizen=No Vote
 Maximum hours
 Compulsory School
 Health and safety
regulations
 Pensions
 Unemployment
insurance
Robert La Follette and
Wisconsin Progressivism
 Wisconsin a hotbed for
progressivism
 “Fighting Bob” La Follett
elected governor in 1900
 Elected Senator in 1906
 Direct Primaries
 New Taxes on RR
 Regulated RR and




Utilities
Civil Service Law 1st
State income tax
Restricted child labor
Limited work hours
Minimum wages for
women
Individual Issues:
Labor
Problems
Solutions
 No regulations on hours and
 Eventually
conditions led to
 Chronic fatigue
 Steel workers– 72-90 hours per
week and 1 24hr shift every 2
weeks
 Average 60hr wk.(10x6)
 Many injuries and deaths
 Lack of parental guidance at
home
 Poor pay
 1900 $400-$500 per year
unskilled and $1500 skilled
 Hours and wages regulated
 Minimum wages,
 Conditions improved
 EX—FDA– Meat inspection
act
Unions
Unions
Strikes
 Knights of Labor (KOL)
 Pullman Strike– Railroad shut
 Industry sectors
 More inclusive
 American Federation of
Labor (AFL)
 Skilled labor
down
 Homestead Strike– Steelworkers
strike
 Ludlow Strike—United Mine
Workers (UMW) strike
 Results were always the same,
the government sided with the
businesses
 IWW
 Open to almost all worker

Note: T.R. Eventually arbitrates a UMW
strike siding with the workers in 1902
(more to come)
Triangle Shirtwaist
1 of many accidents
Event
Possible Cause
 March 25th, 1911
 Fire in rag bin
 Fire ladders could not
 Fire sweeps through the 8,9
and 10th floors of Triangle
Shirtwaist Company
 146 workers dead
reach past 7th floor
 50%+ NY workers above 7th
floor
 No exits, doors locked and
open inward
Note: 1914—35,000 dead and 700,000 injured
The individual issues: Child
Labor
Child Labor
 Children employed in many





industries
Many women opposed
Industry leaders exploited
children
Not in school
Competition for others
Early 1900s– 25% boys and 10%
girls
 Some said it “build character”
 Sometimes it was necessary
Mr. Coal’s Story
Newsies

In 1866, a reformer named Charles
Loring Brace described the
condition of homeless newsboys in
New York City:
 I remember one cold night seeing
some 10 or a dozen of the little
homeless creatures piled together to
keep each other warm beneath the
stairway of The [New York] Sun office.
There used to be a mass of them also
at The Atlas office, sleeping in the
lobbies, until the printers drove them
away by pouring water on them. One
winter, an old burnt-out safe lay all the
season in Wall Street, which was used
as a bedroom by two boys who
managed to crawl into the hole that
had been burned.

In 1872, James B. McCabe, Jr., wrote:
 There are 10,000 children living on the
streets of New York.... The newsboys
constitute an important division of this
army of homeless children. You see
them everywhere.... They rend the air
and deafen you with their shrill cries.
They surround you on the sidewalk
and almost force you to buy their
papers. They are ragged and dirty.
Some have no coats, no shoes and no
hat.
Tenements
 Immigrants usually lived in very tight
conditions in tenement houses
 Eventually laws were passed that improved
tenements some
 1879 Law– Window to open air required
 Dumbbell Tenement– New design allows some air
and light
Riis and his findings
 The law defines it as a house “occupied by three
or more families, living independently
and doing their cooking on the premises; or by
more than two families on a floor, so living and
cooking and having a common right in the halls,
stairways, yards, etc.” (Riis 13)
Conditions
 The sanitary conditions in the tenements were
very poor. The outhouses were rarely cleaned,
causing very noxious odors to permeate the
tenements houses, especially near the
windows. The sewage, dirt and other
unhealthful things caused many diseases, and
the close proximity of the residents to each other
meant that diseases were easily spread.
African American
Progressives
 Booker T. Washington
 Gradual rise of the race– conform to society and
win over the respect of the whites through
coformity
 W.E.B. Dubois
 Immediate equality
 Ida B. Wells
 Sought anti-lynching legislation
 Refer to the readings for specific info.
Progressivism on a
National Level
 Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft and
Woodrow Wilson among other national
leaders began influencing change in America
in the first two decades of the 1900s
 Socialist Leader, Eugene Debs, also played a role
in responding to the day’s issues
Theodore Roosevelt
 Breaks from the BigBusiness-friendly
Republicans who
dominated the party
Theodore Roosevelt’s
“The Square Deal”
 Bureau of Corporations
established to investigate
Northern Securities Company
 400 million dollar RR monopoly
 TR wanted it dissolved
 Used the Sherman Anti-Trust Act
 In fact, it was dissolved with
Supreme Court approval.
(Northern Securities Company v
United States)
Hepburn Act
The ICC (created 1887) had little power
Hepburn Act set maximum prices and required equal pricing (no favoritism)
Anthracite Strike
 Miners wanted their union, the




United Mine Workers (UMW), to
be recognized, a pay increase and
an 8-hour workday.
When refused by the owners, the
miners went on strike.
TR called the two to Washington
and threatened to use federal
troops
Ordered arbitration
Strike ended
 1st Federal Govt.
Support of Strike
TR’s Dinner Guest
 TR invited Booker
T. Washington to
the White House
for dinner.
 Southerners
protested
 Blacks celebrated
1904 Election
 Americans were excited
about the actions TR was
taking to balance the power
between the rich and the
working class.
 TR promised the nation a
“Square Deal”
1906 Reforms
 The Hepburn Act
 gave the government
power to control RR
prices
 Revitalized the Interstate
Commerce Commission
established in 1887
 Pure Food and Drug Act–
labels on food
 Created the FDA
 Meat Inspection Act–
government monitored
the quality and safety of
meat
Conservation
 Established the Department of Interior and the
Department of Agriculture which designated
some land off-limits to agriculture.
 Corruption led TR to replace politicians with
scientists.
 National Forest Service– Gifford Pinchot
 Prevented mining and dams in certain forests
 Said trees need to be replanted when harvested
Overview of
Conservation
150 National Forests
51 Federal Bird Reservations
4 National Game Preserves
5 National Parks
18 National Monuments
24 Reclamation Projects
 "There can be nothing in the
world more beautiful than the
Yosemite, the groves of giant
sequoias and redwoods, the
Canyon of the Colorado, the
Canyon of the Yellowstone,
the Three Tetons; and our
people shoud see to it that
they are preserved for their
children and their children's
children forever, with their
majestic beauty all
unmarred."
 Theodore Roosevelt, Outdoor
Pastimes of an American
Hunter 1905.
Taft
 Taft became president in
1909
 Did not follow TR’s lead as
hoped
 Failed to lower tariffs
(angered public)
 Sided with Ballinger (Sec
of Interior) who was
profiting from the sale of
land designated by TR as
preserved forest.
 People were upset with
Taft
Taft’s Reforms
 Payne-Aldrich Tariffs
 Attempt to lower tariffs
but in fact protected
many sectors which had
an opposite impact
 Trust busting 2x TRs
 Sugar, Standard Oil,
Tobacco, Morgan (oops)
 Helped to endorse
(ratified under Wilson)
 16th Amendment–
Federal income tax
 17th Amendment-Direct
Election of Senators
 Pinchot-Ballinger issue
 Pinochet gone and
Ballinger in sketchy
deals with preserved
land.
TR’s “Bull Moose Party”
 Split from Taft due to his lack of reform actions.
 Ran against Taft for Republican nomination but
lost
 Split from Republicans and established a
platform based on
 Regulations of Corporations
 Worker Protection
 Graduated Income Tax
 Women’s Suffrage
Wilson and “New Freedom”
 Graduated from Princeton
 Presbyterian upbringing leads him to become
a moral idealist
 Wanted to consolidate power in government
win order to break up trusts
 Ratification of 16th and 17th Amendments
 Reduced Tariffs–
 Underwood—Simmons Act
 Federal Reserve Act passed establishing the
Federal Reserve Banking system of today
7 Member Board
 Appointed by President
 Head is NY fed chairman
 FOMC– Meet to determine policy 8 times a
year
 Expansion or Contraction
 Interest Rates, Treasury Bills, Reserve
 Ben Bernanke– Current fed chairman