Progressive Era Activism U.S. 9: Home

Considered the first federal consumer protection law, the Heyburn Bill (1906) regulated the producers and sellers of food.

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Middle-class Americans were even more appalled by his descriptions of the disgusting, unsanitary conditions in which meat was processed

Congress tried, unsuccessfully, to respond to the problem by introducing more than 190 bills between 1879 and 1906 to regulate food and drugs.

Pure Food and Drug Act prohibited the manufacture, sale, or transportation of any adulterated, misbranded, poisonous, or deleterious food, drug, medicine, or liquor.

Passed on June 30, 1906, the Pure Food and Drug Act was enacted in response to widespread public outrage over the lack of sanitation standards in the food and drug industry.

IMAGE-Jars and tins of potions from the early-20th century promise to cure everything from freckles to obesity.

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Letter to President Theodore Roosevelt, Upton Sinclair supports the presence of federal inspectors in meat-packing houses.

This advertisement for Lewis 66 Rye tells consumers that the product "is guaranteed under the National Pure Food and Drugs Act."

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In 1902 Dr. Wiley started research with human volunteers to determine the effects of food preservatives on digestion and health.

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“The Jungle,” first appeared in several successive issues of Appeal to Reason in 1905.

The article offers information on a food poisoning outbreak in the U.S. in 2008 due to peanuts and the issue of food safety.

Another social issue that drew the attention of the muckrakers and progressive reformers was the environment.

Our nation was changing rapidly in the second half of the 19th century.

The Industrial Revolution had many problems. Pollution was a big issue.

Roosevelt believed that, through scientific planning, natural resources could be used wisely and would remain available to help the greatest number of people, not only in his time but in future times.

In the mid to late 19th century, natural resources were heavily exploited.

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IMAGE--President Theodore Roosevelt is often referred to as the nation's first conservation president.

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This executive order returns land that was to be sold to the public domain.

Theodore Roosevelt becomes President of the United States upon the death of President McKinley on September 14, and conservation becomes a cornerstone of his domestic policy.

Intelligent use of the earth's natural resources to prevent their waste through abuse or neglect.

African American Racism

IMAGE-- White minstrel performers used makeup to disguise themselves as African Americans, with grossly exaggerated features. The caricature portrayed by Williams was based on overtly racist stereotypes, which denigrated black Americans and reflected the rampant racism of his time.

NAACP is the oldest and largest civil rights organization in the United States.

Once white Democrats gained control of city councils and state legislatures across the South, they enacted a wide variety of laws aimed at returning blacks to the status of second-class citizens

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The founders of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People).

-A WOMAN OF FIRSTS: Bethune spent her entire life working to help African- Americans achieve the same rights as white people.

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In July 1919, Chicago became engulfed in racial violence that ultimately claimed the lives of 38 residents (23 blacks and 15 whites).

Voting rights are the foundation of American democracy.

In 1896 the Supreme Court sanctioned legal separation of the races in its ruling in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson, which stated that separate but equal facilities did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment.

Hundreds of African Americans were lynched every year in the early 1900s, usually in the southern states.

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W.E.B. Du Bois became an important campaigner for civil rights, helping to found the Niagara Movement (1905) and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) (1909)

Founded for the purpose of initiating aggressive action to abolish racial discrimination and to secure full civil rights for African Americans in the United States.

W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963) was an African American writer, scholar, and civil rights leader.

During the nineteenth century, America’s small cadre of educated black professionals had recognized the need for an organization to fight for African American rights.

At the turn of the century, African Americans in the South lived under Jim Crow laws that kept them segregated from whites.

Born a slave in 1862, Ida Bell Wells was the oldest daughter of James and Lizzie Wells.

In 1870, the first elevated rapid transit system, the West Side & Yonkers Patent Railway, opened in Manhattan.

The Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century saw a sharp increase in the number of homeless, or paupers, as they were then called, in the United States.

Image of subway opening

Irish family of three moved to Chicago two years after Mary Egan’s mother died a very slow and sad death.

In 1890, Riis, who at the time was a police reporter whose work occasionally appeared in the New York media, launched a personal investigation into the conditions in New York City’s slums.

As First Lady, Ellen Wilson lent her name to the cause of improving slums in the District of Columbia. Shortly before her death, Congress passed legislation, which Ellen strongly supported, to aid in the improvement of the slums.

The United States experienced epidemics throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; yellow fever epidemics occurred in 1853, 1878, and 1905, and repeated cholera epidemics included a major outbreak in the Mississippi River Valley in 1873.

Tenement housing was most common in New York City in 1800s. At that time, thousands of poor immigrants poured into the country looking for work.

Black neighborhoods and communities typically received inadequate public services, which meant that residents struggled with poor drainage, shortages of fresh drinking water, and problems with garbage and sewage disposal.

The concentrated industrial facilities and overtaxed municipal sewage systems dumped pollution into the air and water, contributing to the spread of cholera and other deadly diseases.

Riis’s book forced middle-class Americans and government officials to confront the problems facing people in the nation’s urban slums. His exposé led to the establishment of the Tenement House Commission to improve the design of urban housing and provide safe and sanitary living conditions for the poor.

High death rates from waterborne epidemic diseases and the concern for reason for reform.

When last spring some workmen, while moving a pile of lumber on a North River pier, found under the last plank the body of a little lad crushed to death, no one had missed a boy, though his parents afterward turned up.

Rapid growth in population and industrialization, and the consequent urbanization created by this growth, had placed heavy demands on the nation’s streams for both water consumption and waste disposal. As a result, residents of many cities soon found themselves drinking the sewage of their upstream neighbors.

IMAGE--An alley in a New York slum, as photographed by Jacob Riis ca. 1888.

IMAGE--Photograph by Jacob Riis of children playing in a New York City tenement, ca. 1888

IMAGE--Jacob Riis portrait of an immigrant mother and child in a New York City tenement, ca. 1890.

IMAGE--In this Jacob Riis photograph, immigrants crowd into an unofficial boarding house in a New York City tenement during the late 1800s.

IMAGE--Jacob Riis photograph of garbage on East Fifth Street, one of New York City's many tenement areas during the late 19th century.

IMAGE--Poor residents of a New York City tenement eke out a living making neckties in a local workshop during the late 1880s. Photographed by Jacob Riis, such makeshift sweatshops were common during the late 19th century.

IMAGE--German immigrants earn a living making cigars in a New York tenement in the late 1880s. Jacob Riis' photographs, published in his book How the Other Half Lives, documented the diverse stories of the urban poor during the late 19th century.

IMAGE---Resting place of three "Street Arabs" in the New York tenement district of the 1880's, photographed by Jacob Riis. "Street Arabs" was a term for homeless children in the city, so named because of their nomadic lifestyle.

IMAGE--It was unusual for a police station to offer lodging to women, but some did, such as this one in New York City, ca. 1890. Photo by Jacob Riis.

"Temperance" refers to the moderate consumption of alcoholic beverages.

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Her first efforts were on behalf of the TEMPERANCE movement.

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(1846–1911) American temperance leader.

The temperance movement was a widespread effort in the 19th and early 20th centuries to control, limit, or prohibit the use of alcohol.

Formed in 1874 in Cleveland, Ohio, the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) became the largest women's organization in the world.

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Organization founded in Oberlin, Ohio in 1893 to coordinate the efforts of the Women's Christian Temperance Union, the Prohibition Party, and other anti-alcohol groups.

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Ratified in 1919.

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Instituted nationally in the United States in 1919 through passage of the Volstead Act and the Eighteenth Amendment.

By 1830, Americans, mostly men, were drinking on the average of almost four gallons of spirits per year (about twice what Americans consume today). Alcohol addiction threatened the nation's health and economic well-being.

Getting rid of the liquor industry was not just the idea of religious zealots. Many physicians also were leading prohibitionists, and they were joined by business people.

Good overview of women's suffrage issue. Lots of good primary source images.

Source: Print Book:
Women's Suffrage Giving the Right to Vote to All Americans, Jennifer MacBain-Stephens, Rosen, New York, 2006

Source: Print Book:
Women's Suffrage Giving the Right to Vote to All Americans, Jennifer MacBain-Stephens, Rosen, New York, 2006

Source: Print Book:
Women's Suffrage Giving the Right to Vote to All Americans, Jennifer MacBain-Stephens, Rosen, New York, 2006

Source: Print Book:
Women's Suffrage Giving the Right to Vote to All Americans, Jennifer MacBain-Stephens, Rosen, New York, 2006

Describes some of the problems, solutions, methods, challenges, and success

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1840-1920

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A women's convention held in Seneca Falls, N.Y. in 1848 called for woman suffrage.

The purpose of this exhibit is to provide scholars, historians, and those with a general interest in the suffrage movement access to images of the memorabilia that so attracted activists as they made their final push in both England and America.

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In 1890 the rival AWSA and NWSA agreed to merge into a single group, to be known as the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA).

Middle-class women joined the progressive reform movement in large numbers in the early 1900s.

Anthony gave speeches around the country telling crowds that women had a right to vote.

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Most importantly, women could not vote. They had no voice in electing the government or making the laws that controlled them.

The 18 grievances that followed included the lack of the vote, right to wages, and equal custody of children.

All of these people demanding their voices are heard for the next four years, everyone from celebrities to activists to normal moms.

It would give women the right to vote. We need this because 'manhood suffrage,' or a man's government, is not an organization. It is the opposite. Men's ideas are bad for government, religion and our society. The male element is a destructive force.

This reference provides definitive coverage of the social and cultural developments of the period, as well as its political and economic history. This work features hundreds of detailed entries on issues, events, people, and ideas, and includes original documents, sidebar features, and in-depth essays on major themes and developments.

Requirement for Exhibit

This packet lists all of the requirements including the rubric, and the individual project choices.

Progressive Activism notetaking sheet.

Most people simply accepted the fact that their city leaders operated on the principles of fraud and greed.

This patronage or “spoils” system was a tradition in American politics. Whenever control of city, state, or federal government passed from one political party to the other, the incoming party purged the old party’s officeholders and replaced them with supporters.

Tweed's crimes were many. He and his cronies faked leases on city-owned buildings. . .

He is remembered for battling political corruption and corporate greed during his long career in public service.

Through dishonest and honest graft, bosses maintained their political power and voter support.

See how many people were put in power because of political favors.

Also known as a party machine.

Two other factors were almost always characteristic of machines. One was partisan politics. The machine succeeded by taking over one of the parties in a city and effectively becoming the city's Republican Party or, more often, Democratic Party.

One of the original muckrakers, whose investigative reporting in the 1900s revealed the corruption that often underlay American urban politics and big business.

Practice of rewarding members of one's party with governmental jobs.

Wisconsin Progressives

The public's disgust with America's long history of corruption eventually produced a number of reforms.

One of the founders of the Progressive movement in U.S. politics.

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Progressive Era reformers at the turn of the century successfully compelled local governments to introduce civil service systems to replace party patronage in government employment.

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The National Women's Trade Union League (NWTUL) formed in 1903 in response to male unionists' lack of interest in the organization of women workers.

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Helen Todd, a former factory inspector in Chicago, reports on children's explanations as to why they work when very young.

In the early 1900s many states and local governments had already adopted compulsory education laws.

Most of the large corporations that dominated American industries took advantage of their economic power and political influence to treat their workers poorly

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It is one of the characteristics of a free and democratic nation that it have free and independent labor unions.

Whether you work by the piece or work by the day, Decreasing the hours increases the pay.

Where trade unions are most firmly organized, there are the rights of the people most respected.
—Samuel Gompers

Haywood was known not only for his Socialist beliefs, but also for his claims that violence, sabotage, and other forms of “direct action” were legitimate tools for labor to use in its struggles against the owners of the country’s mines and factories.

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In September 1913 the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) organized a strike of Colorado coal miners against Colorado Fuel and Iron (CFI).

During the late 19th century, labor in the United States underwent significant changes due to the nation's continued industrialization

After her dressmaking shop burned down in the Great Chicago Fire, Jones began a new life as a union organizer. Mine workers, mill workers, railroad workers—all became her "children" and called her "Mother Jones."

President of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) for nearly 40 years, Samuel Gompers helped shape the American labor movement.

Striking Pennsylvania coal miners harassing "blacklegs"—

Forming a union was dangerous, too. Employers fired anyone they even suspected of union activity.

Garment worker strike.

Fire trapped 500 workers.

MIlitia guard the mill.

Timeline of working people's struggles.

he Knights of Labor was the largest and most powerful labor union in America during the last half of the 19th century.

Sweatshops are factories with low wages . . .

Industrial workers labored under the complete control of their employer.

As factories grew, owners needed more workers. They looked to children.

A girl, not much older than your 14 years, hands you a wad of cotton to put in your ears.
“Here,” she tells you. “It will dull the sound. You won't get a headache if you wear them.”

4:30 a.m.
Thomas's father wakes him up. Thomas washes and gets dressed for a long day of work.

Factory owners could make more money if they paid their workers low wages and did not invest in safety measures.