essential question:How does muckraking lead to actual

reform, as seen around 1900? PART 1: PROGRESSIVE ERA MUCKRAKING

When? related words:

description:

Progressive Era

about 1890 to WWI (1917)

the time of a movement for progress to correct the problems of the Gilded Age

A muckraker is someone who exposes problems in society

(term first emerges in Progressive Era)

McClure’s was the most

famous magazine for

muckrakers to publish

their investigative

reports.

consider:

How does the video affect the way that you think about the food that you eat?

Muckraking helps cause progressivism.

What do you think would result if everyone in America was exposed to this video?

This is a screenshot from a video shot by an undercover investigator from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals caught slaughterhouse workers allegedly viciously abusing pigs.

Progressivism is a belief in social progress through increased efficiency and government regulation.

How does muckraking lead to actual reform, as seen around 1900? PART 2: MUCKRAKING CAUSES REFORM

How reform often occurs in the modern era:

essential question:

PROBLEM

MUCKRAKING

PROGRESSIVISM: MANY PEOPLE USING THEIR

POWER AS CITIZENS and/or

WEALTHY INDIVIDUALS USING THEIR TIME AND MONEY

REFORM

URBAN SLUMS

PROBLEM:

List some problems with urban slums in the late 1800s.

• Jacob Riis muckraked about urban slums in his book, How the Other Half Lives

Based on the photographs he used for the book, what problems is Riis muckraking?

someone or something exposing the problem (such as MUCKRAKING):

Scene on the Roof of the Mott Street Barracks

Men's Lodging Room in the West 47th Street Station

Dens of Death

A Flat in the Pauper's

Barracks with All Its

Furniture

It Costs a Dollar a Month to Sleep in These Sheds

A Seven-Cent Lodging House, Pell Street

Bohemian Cigarmakers at Work in Their Tenement

The Slide That Was the Children's Only Playground

Night School in the Seventh Avenue Lodging House

The Walls Began to Give

• the Social Gospel Movement (salvation through service to the poor) advertised problems, asking “What would Jesus do?”

PROGRESSIVISM: WEALTHY INDIVIDUALS USING THEIR TIME AND MONEY

Many upper-class white women were inspired, often by religion, to use their considerable time and money to improve the urban slums.

• the settlement house movement (i.e. Jane Addams Hull House providing housing and other assistance to the poor immigrants in the city)

REFORM:

GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS

PROBLEM:

List some problems with government and politics in the late 1800s.

someone or something exposing the problem (such as MUCKRAKING):

• Thomas Nast’s cartoons muckraking Tammany Hall

• Lincoln Steffens wrote articles, “The Shame of the Cities,” muckraking about corruption

What problem is exposed in the excerpt of his

muckraking?

from the section on Philadelphia’s political machine:The machine controls the whole process of voting, and practices fraud at every stage. The assessor's list is the voting list, and the assessor is the machine's man. . . . The assessor pads the list with the names of dead dogs, children, and non-existent persons. One newspaper printed the picture of a dog, another that of a little four-year-old negro boy, down on such a list. … Rudolph Blankenburg, a persistent fighter for the right and the use of the right to vote (and, by the way, an immigrant), sent out just before one election a registered letter to each voter on the rolls of a certain selected division. Sixty-three per cent were returned marked "not at," "removed," "deceased," etc. From one four-story house where forty-four voters were addressed, eighteen letters came back undelivered; from another of forty-eight voters, came back forty-one letters; from another sixty-one out of sixty-two; from another, forty-four out of forty-seven. Six houses in one division were assessed at one hundred and seventy-two voters, more than the votes cast in the previous election in any one of two hundred entire divisions.

PROGRESSIVISM: MANY PEOPLE USING THEIR POWER AS CITIZENS

• progressive politicians (i.e. Robert LaFollette) replace the corrupt ones

Teddy Roosevelt, seen right, would tame

the Tammany Tiger. Robert LaFollette, on left, reformed Wisconsin’s

state government.

• voters are given more power (i.e. 17th Amendment allows for direct election of senators)

state legislature

votes for chooses

U.S. Senators

votes directly for

REFORM:

LABOR AND INDUSTRY

PROBLEM:

List some problems with labor and industry in the late 1800s.

i.e. sweatshops

someone or something exposing the problem (such as MUCKRAKING):

• labor unions (i.e. Samuel Gompers and the AFL)

• Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle, a book that exposed unsanitary and dangerous conditions in factories that produce meat

Based on the excerpt from the book, what was bad about the meat-packing industry?

“…old sausage that had been rejected, and that was moldy and white – it would be dosed with borax and glycerin, and dumped into the hoppers, and made over again for home consumption. There would be meat that had tumbled out on the floor, in the dirt and sawdust, where the workers had tramped and spit uncounted billions of consumption germs. There would be meat stored in great piles in rooms; and the water from leaky roofs would drip over it, and thousands of rats would race about on it. It was too dark in these storage places to see well, but a man could run his hand over these piles of meat and sweep off handfuls of the dried dung of rats. These rats were nuisances, and the packers would put poisoned bread out for them; they would die, and then rats, bread, and meat would go into the hoppers together… the meat would be shoveled into carts, and the man who did the shoveling would not trouble to lift out a rat even when he saw one – there were things that went into the sausage in comparison with which a poisoned rat was a tidbit.”

excerpt from The Jungle

• Ida Tarbell muckraked about Standard Oil

o What was something bad that Standard Oil was doing?

• Lewis Hine’s photographs

What is Hine muckraking?

Some boys and girls were so small they had to climb up on to the spinning frame to mend broken threads and to put

back the empty bobbins. Bibb Mill No. 1. Macon, Ga.

This is a young driver in the Brown mine. Has been

driving one year. Works 7 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. daily.

Brown, W. Va.

Young cigar makers in Engelhardt & Co. 3 boys looked under 14. Labor leaders told me in busy times many small

boys and girls were employed. Youngsters all smoke. Tampa, Fla.

The overseer said apologetically, "She just happened in." She was working steadily. The mills seem full of

youngsters who "just happened in" or "are helping sister." Newberry, S.C.

Richard Pierce, age 14, a Western Union

Telegraph Co. messenger. Nine

months in service, works from 7 a.m. to 6

p.m. Smokes and visits houses of prostitution.

Wilmington, Del.

• newspapers’ coverage of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire

Triangle Shirtwaist Company

Based on the photographs, why did the muckraking of this event

shock people?

images from the fire:

PROGRESSIVISM: MANY PEOPLE USING THEIR POWER AS CITIZENS

• some improved conditions and pay for workers, including safety laws

REFORM:

union membership, 1897-1920

• child labor laws passed

WOMEN

PROBLEM:

List some problems that women faced in the late 1800s.

someone or something exposing the problem (such as MUCKRAKING):

Skim chapter 13, section 2 find some of the many examples. List what you find on your page.

• many advertised need for suffrage

PROGRESSIVISM: MANY PEOPLE USING THEIR POWER AS CITIZENS and

WEALTHY INDIVIDUALS USING THEIR

TIME AND MONEY

many also opposed women’s suffrage:

REFORM:• 19th Amendment gave women the right to vote after WWI (1920)

ALCOHOL

PROBLEM:

List some problems that alcohol might cause in the late 1800s.

• Carrie Nation and others muckraked for prohibition (banning alcohol)

someone or something exposing the problem (such as MUCKRAKING):

PROGRESSIVISM: MANY PEOPLE USING THEIR POWER AS CITIZENS

• 18th Amendment = prohibition

REFORM:

Progressive Era Reforms ReviewOne common mnemonic device (memory tool) is creating an acrostic. This is done by memorizing the first letter of each word in a phrase. Ideally, the first letters will form a real word or name, but may also form a nonsensical word. An example is below. Create two others based on the muckraking reformers of the Progressive Era. It is usually easiest to start by making a statement.example:

JETHRO

acob Riis

xposed

enements in

ow the Other Half Lives,

ead

ften