Life After the Civil War
Previous Unit
Urban Growth
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Imperialism
Progressive Movement
is about
how the impact of the Progressive Movement changed lives of Americans
I. Negative Effects of
Industrialization
(USII.4e)
 Child labor
 Low wages, long
hours
 Unsafe working
conditions
II. Rise of Organized
Labor (USII.4e)
 Formation of unions:
Growth of American
Federation of Labor
 Strikes: Aftermath of
Homestead Strike
ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS:
1. How did the reforms of the Progressive Movement change
the United States?
2. How did workers respond to the negative effects of
industrialization?
III. Progressive
Movement
Workplace Reforms
(USII.4e)
 Improved safety
conditions
 Reduced work hours
 Placed restrictions on
child labor
IV. Women’s
Suffrage (USII.4e)
V. Temperance
Movement (USII.4e)
 Increased educational
opportunities
 Attained voting
rights
 19th Amendment
 Susan B. Anthony
 Elizabeth Cady
Stanton
 Groups opposed to
the making and
consuming of alcohol
 18th Amendment
VOCABULARY:
negative effects of industrialization
labor unions
American Federation of LaborStanton
strike
Homestead Strike
workplace reforms
1
suffrage movement
19th Amendment
Susan B. Anthony
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
temperance movement
18th Amendment
I. Effects of Industrialization
Is about…
The rise of organized labor and how laws were created to protect workers and child laborers
Start with …
Add this …
Essential Details
Examples
Laws improved safety
conditions
Low wages, long hours
Unsafe working conditions
Results in…
American Federation of
Labor
Used threat of strikes
 Homestead
Strike
Child labor banned
In the space below, create a “thesis” as if to write an essay.
2
Four Square on Child Labor:
U.S.II4e
Honors: Read all
Academic: Read 2 paragraphs
As you read the Child Labor article, you will use this note taking strategy.
1. Use these symbols in each paragraph as you read. (highlighters are a good idea)
Yellow  Main Idea  “ ! ”
Blue Important Detail/Fact  “ * ”
GreenMost Interesting  “”
? Confusion/Question  “ ? ”
2. With a partner, discuss what you marked in your paragraphs.
3. Then place 3 bullets of information in each of the four squares below.
Main Idea “!”
Important Details/Facts “ * ”
1.
1.
2.
2.
3.
3.
Confusion/Question “?”
Most Interesting “”
1.
1.
2.
2.
3.
3.
3
_______________________
Photographs of Lewis Hine: Documentation of Child Labor
Background "There is work that profits children, and there is work that
brings profit only to employers. The object of employing children is
not to train them, but to get high profits from their work." -- Lewis
Hine, 1908
After the Civil War, the availability of natural resources, new inventions, and a
receptive market combined to fuel an industrial boom. The demand for labor grew, and
in the late 19th and early 20th centuries many children were drawn into the labor force.
Factory wages were so low that children often had to work to help support their families.
The number of children under the age of 15 who worked in industrial jobs for wages
climbed from 1.5 million in 1890 to 2 million in 1910. Businesses liked to hire children
because they worked in unskilled jobs for lower wages than adults, and their small
hands made them more adept at handling small parts and tools. Children were seen as
part of the family economy. Immigrants and rural migrants often sent their children to
work, or worked alongside them. However, child laborers barely experienced their youth.
Going to school to prepare for a better future was an opportunity these underage
workers rarely enjoyed. As children worked in industrial settings, they began to develop
serious health problems. Many child laborers were underweight. Some suffered from
stunted growth and curvature of the spine. They developed diseases related to their
work environment, such as tuberculosis and bronchitis for those who worked in coal
mines or cotton mills. They faced high accident rates due to physical and mental fatigue
caused by hard work and long hours.
By the early 1900s many Americans were calling child labor "child slavery" and
were demanding an end to it. They argued that long hours of work deprived children of
the opportunity of an education to prepare themselves for a better future. Instead, child
labor condemned them to a future of illiteracy, poverty, and continuing misery. In 1904 a
group of progressive reformers founded the National Child Labor Committee, an
organization whose goal was the abolition of child labor. The organization received a
charter from Congress in 1907. It hired teams of investigators to gather evidence of
children working in harsh conditions and then organized exhibitions with photographs
and statistics to dramatize the plight of these children. These efforts resulted in the
4
establishment in 1912 of the Children's Bureau as a federal information clearinghouse.
In 1913 the Children's Bureau was transferred to the Department of Labor.
Lewis Hine, a New York City schoolteacher and photographer, believed that a
picture could tell a powerful story. He felt so strongly about the abuse of children as
workers that he quit his teaching job and became an investigative photographer for the
National Child Labor Committee. Hine traveled around the country photographing the
working conditions of children in all types of industries. He photographed children in coal
mines, in meatpacking houses, in textile mills, and in canneries. He took pictures of
children working in the streets as shoe shiners, newsboys, and hawkers. In many
instances he tricked his way into factories to take the pictures that factory managers did
not want the public to see. He was careful to document every photograph with precise
facts and figures. To obtain captions for his pictures, he interviewed the children on
some pretext and then scribbled his notes with his hand hidden inside his pocket.
Hine believed that if people could see for themselves the abuses and injustice of
child labor, they would demand laws to end those evils. By 1916, Congress passed the
Keating-Owens Act that established the following child labor standards: a minimum age
of 14 for workers in manufacturing and 16 for workers in mining; a maximum workday of
8 hours; prohibition of night work for workers under age 16; and a documentary proof of
age. Unfortunately, this law was later ruled unconstitutional on the ground that
congressional power to regulate interstate commerce did not extend to the conditions of
labor. Effective action against child labor had to await the New Deal. Reformers,
however, did succeed in forcing legislation at the state level banning child labor and
setting maximum hours. By 1920 the number of child laborers was cut to nearly half of
what it had been in 1910.
Lewis Hine died in poverty, neglected by all but a few. His reputation continued to
grow, however, and now he is recognized as a master American photographer.. Hine's
images of working children stirred America's conscience and helped change the nation's
labor laws.
Resources:
Foner, Eric, and John A. Garraty, eds. The Reader's Companion to American History. Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
1991.Nash, Gary B., et al. The American People: Creating a Nation and a Society. New York: Harper & Row Publishers,
1990.
5
Reading Activity (U.S II 4e)
Read “The Jungle” and write down five disgusting facts.
Read “The Triangle Shirt Fire” and write down five tragic facts.
Disgusting: The Jungle
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Tragic: Triangle Fire
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6
From THE JUNGLE – Upton Sinclair --1906
From Chapter 12
…But perhaps the worst of the consequences of this long siege was that
they lost another member of their family; Brother Jonas disappeared. One
Saturday night he did not come home, and thereafter all their efforts to get trace
of him were futile. It was said by the boss at Durham's that he had gotten his
week's money and left there. That might not be true, of course, for sometimes
they would say that when a man had been killed; it was the easiest way out of it
for all concerned. When, for instance, a man had fallen into one of the rendering
tanks and had been made into pure leaf lard and peerless fertilizer, there was no
use letting the fact out and making his family unhappy.
From Chapter 14
With one member trimming beef in a cannery, and another working in a
sausage factory, the family had a first-hand knowledge of the great majority of
Packingtown swindles. For it was the custom, as they found, whenever meat was
so spoiled that it could not be used for anything else, either to can it or else to
chop it up into sausage. With what had been told them by Jonas, who had
worked in the pickle rooms, they could now study the whole of the spoiled-meat
industry on the inside, and read a new and grim meaning into that old
Packingtown jest--that they use everything of the pig except the squeal.
Jonas had told them how the meat that was taken out of pickle would
often be found sour, and how they would rub it up with soda to take away the
smell, and sell it to be eaten on free-lunch counters; also of all the miracles of
chemistry which they performed, giving to any sort of meat, fresh or salted,
whole or chopped, any color and any flavor and any odor they chose. In the
pickling of hams they had an ingenious apparatus, by which they saved time and
increased the capacity of the plant--a machine consisting of a hollow needle
attached to a pump; by plunging this needle into the meat and working with his
foot, a man could fill a ham with pickle in a few seconds. And yet, in spite of this,
there would be hams found spoiled, some of them with an odor so bad that a
man could hardly bear to be in the room with them. To pump into these the
packers had a second and much stronger pickle which destroyed the odor--a
process known to the workers as "giving them thirty per cent." Also, after the
hams had been smoked, there would be found some that had gone to the bad.
Formerly these had been sold as "Number Three Grade," but later on some
ingenious person had hit upon a new device, and now they would extract the
bone, about which the bad part generally lay, and insert in the hole a white-hot
iron. After this invention there was no longer Number One, Two, and Three
Grade--there was only Number One Grade.
7
Leap for Life, Leap of Death (Triangle Shirt Fire)
275 girls started to collect their belongings as they were leaving work at 4:45 PM
on Saturday. Within twenty minutes some of girls' charred bodies were lined up along
the East Side of Greene Street. Those girls who flung themselves from the ninth floor
were merely covered with tarpaulins where they hit the concrete. The Bellevue morgue
was overrun with bodies and a makeshift morgue was set up on the adjoining pier on the
East River. Hundred's of parents and family members came to identify their lost loved
ones. 146 employees of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company were dead the night of March
25, 1911. The horror of their deaths led to numerous changes in occupational safety
standards that currently ensure the safety of workers today.
At the time of the fire the only safety measures available for the workers were 27
buckets of water and a fire escape that would collapse when people tried to use them.
Most of the doors were locked and those that were not locked only opened inwards and
were effectively held shut by the onrush of workers escaping the fire. As the clothing
materials feed the fire workers tried to escape anyway they could. 25 passengers flung
themselves down the elevator shaft trying to escape the fire. Their bodies rained blood
and coins down onto the employees who made it into the elevator cars. Engine
Company 72 and 33 were the first on the scene. To add to the already bleak situation
the water streams from their hoses could only reach the 7th floor. Their ladders could
only reach between the 6th and 7th floor. 19 bodies were found charred against the
locked doors. 25 bodies were found huddled in a cloakroom. These deaths, although
horrible, was not what changed the feelings toward government regulation. Upon finding
that they could not use the doors to escape and the fire burning at their clothes and hair,
the girls of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company, aged mostly between 13 and 23 years of
age, jumped 9 stories to their death. One after another the girls jumped to their deaths
on the concrete over one hundred of feet below. Sometimes the girls jumped three and
four at a time. On lookers watched in horror as body after body fell to the earth. "Thud -dead; thud -- dead; thud -- dead; thud -- dead. Sixty-two thud -- deads. I call them that,
because the sound and the thought of death came to me each time, at the same
instant," said United Press reporter William Shephard. The bodies of teenage girls lined
the street below. Blankets that would-be rescuers used ripped at the weight and the
speed the bodies were falling. Fire Department blankets were ripped when multiple girls
tried to jump into the same blanket. Some girls tried to jump to the ladders that could not
8
reach the ninth floor. None reached the ladders. The fire escape in the rear of the
building collapsed and trapped the employees even more.
Many people were outraged at the tragedy. The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire helped to
solidify support for workers' unions like the International Ladies' Garment Workers'
Union. The owners, Isaac Harris and Max Blanck, were tried for manslaughter but were
acquitted in 1914. Though most people were disgusted with what had happened, there
were no regulations in effect that would have saved lives.
The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire of 1911 still remains one of the most vivid and horrid
tragedies that changed American Labor Unions and labor laws. The fire had come only
five years after Upton Sinclair published his book The Jungle, which detailed the plight of
the workers at a meat packer's plant. But instead of reforming the working conditions
most people wanted to reform the health and safety regulations on food. The tragic
death of 146 girls, whose average age was 19, was needed before the politicians and
the people saw for the need to regulate safety in the workplace.
The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire of 1911 would change the regulation by government
of business. Before the fire government had mostly stayed away from business feeling it
had no power to legislate it. After the fire government could not avoid instituting laws to
protect the workers. Once the New York legislature enacted safety laws, other states in
the US followed suit. Workers also began to look toward unions to voice their concerns
over safety and pay. Samuel Gompers of the AFL had won a lot of trust and admiration
by sitting in on The Factory Commission of 1911. The International Ladies' Garment
Workers' Union also won support and led a march of 100,000 to tell the New York
legislature to move into action. Unfortunately not everyone had learned their history.
March 25, 1990, on the 79th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, the Happy Land
Social Club fire in the Bronx, New York killed 87 people. Most of the people killed were
not workers but customers. There was no sprinkler system, fire alarms, nor exits. The
windows had iron bars on them leaving only one door to escape the inferno. On
September 3, 1991 in Hamlet North Carolina 25 workers died at a poultry factory. The
exits were ill marked, blocked or padlocked. The doors were padlocked to prevent theft.
The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire remains as a turning point in US history. Countless state
and federal laws were enacted because of this incident. Unions gained numerous new
workers who wanted someone to fight for their safety. Now employers in the US have a
clear set of guidelines that they need to follow to ensure the safety of their employees.
9
Progressive Presidents chart: U.S. II4e + U.S. II5b
Directions: As you watch the video clips, write down 3 main points about each president.
Teddy Roosevelt
William Howard Taft
Woodrow Wilson
1.
1.
1.
2.
2.
2.
3.
3.
3.
10
PERSON
Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt
U.S. II5b
He is important because…
He is known as a progressive President who wanted to reform numerous problems in American society
Ways to describe Roosevelt:
Aggressive, civic-minded, a “go-getter”, active, well-liked, never gave up
Known for
Don’t confuse with…
Impact on our world
today
Compare Roosevelt to
someone of today:
_______________________

Spanish-American War

Trust-busting

Panama Canal and
_________________
Diplomacy

Conservationism

Reforming city, state, and
national governments

Regulation of food and
drug industry
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
(FDR), Theodore’s cousin,
who became President in
the 1930’s during the Great
Depression

Roosevelt helped to
shape the presidency
into what it is today

________________
________________
________________
________________
________________
_______________

He was a role model
for many other
reformers
They are (alike / not alike)
because…
________________________
________________________
________________________
________________________
________________________
________________________
________________________.
Knowledge Connections
This person makes you think of …
Because …

______________________

____________________________________________________________
11

______________________

____________________________________________________________
Reforms
are about…
How the Progressives tried to help eliminate corruption in government and make the workplace safer for workers
Eliminated corruption and political machines
Government
___________
Changed laws in national, state, and local
governments
Reformers (____________) pushed
for change
Workplace Reforms
12
Placed restrictions on ________________
II. Significant Reforms of the Progressive Movement
the efforts of Progressive era reformers to change the laws of the United States
Woman’s Suffrage
Basis for
movement
Leaders
Action/Legislation


Gain______ rights
Increase
educational
opportunities


_____________
_______________
______________
Women gain the right to
vote with the passage of
the _______ Amendment
Temperance
Movement
Opposed to the_________,
_________, and
______________ of
alcohol


Frances Willard
_____________
Helped to pass the 18th
Amendment which
prohibited the
manufacture, sale, and
transport of alcoholic
beverages
National Association
for the Advancement
of Colored People
(NAACP)
_____________________
_____________________
_____________________


______________
Ida Wells-Barnett
Helped to begin the
movement towards equal
rights for African
Americans
Other Progressive Era reforms



Efforts to end political corruption (political machines)
Reforms to local, state, and national elections (17th Amendment, recall, referendums, and direct primaries)
13
Creation of Food and Drug Act to regulate food supply (Meat Inspection Act)
Temperance Movement
Background
Individuals and groups pushed to make the production and consumption of alcohol illegal. The Women’s Christian Temperance
Movement led the way to banning alcohol in the United States. Many of those that wanted to see alcohol banned were personally affected by the
destructive effects of alcohol.
The 18th Amendment to the Constitution banned the manufacture, transport, and sale of alcohol.
Reactions
Many applauded the new law, while others tried to find ways around it.
Unexpected



People made their own alcoholic beverages.
Gangsters, such as Al Capone, made a fortune by providing
alcohol that was smuggled in from Canada and the
Caribbean.
Illegal clubs called speakeasies were established to sneak
Alcohol to willing customers.
Results
Expected



Legitimate businesses stopped selling alcoholic
beverages to their customers.
Alcoholism and liver disease declined during
Prohibition.
Police and government agents were in charge of
enforcing the new law (created the FBI).
Spin-off
People found that Prohibition reduced the amount of alcohol consumed in the United States. Many felt that it caused normally law-abiding
citizens to break laws. As a result, by the mid-1920s, half of those arrested for federal crimes were being charged with violating the 18th
Amendment. In 1933, the 18th Amendment was repealed ending the Prohibition “experiment.”
14
Expected
Passage of the 18th
Amendment
Unexpected
Passage of the 18th
Amendment
15
The Progressive Movement
___________________ was a group of people asking for reforms.
A reform is a change for the better. ________wanted to reform
factories, business, and government to make life better for the people.
Sometimes when workers did not get what they wanted, they went on
strike. When they went on ______, they stopped working so that the
factory owners would listen to them. Workers joined ________ to
work together to make factories safer. Sometimes labor unions joined
the ___________________, which was a large group of unions that
worked together for workplace reforms. The ______________
were the minimum wage, accident insurance, fewer hours, and less
child labor.
_________________________ helped make laws to control
business. He called his program the __________. There were new
laws to stop big companies from taking over small companies. Big
companies could not set prices, and the government checked to see if
prices were too high. They also helped get new laws that protected
workers.
The Progressives wanted to make the government more honest.
______________ wanted the government to hire workers based on
a merit system. A ________ is when people are hired based on
their qualifications rather than by favors to friends or family members.
Progressives made the hiring of government officials more honest.
The Progressives also helped make changes about voting and
elections. State laws made voting secret. Elections became more
honest because people could vote freely. Women still did not have the
right to vote. ____________ and other women worked for
____________________. Women got the right to vote from the
_____________ in 1920.
Many women also supported the ________________, which wanted
to stop the use of alcohol. The temperance movement supported the
18th Amendment. The ________________ stopped people from
making, selling, or transporting alcohol. The 18th Amendment was
passed and became law in 1919.
16