 What are some of the problems of city life?

 Our theme for this unit is about the Role of Government in our lives.  Our Unit question is: ): To what extent does government have a role in your life? In other words what should government be allowed to do and not allowed to do? Why?

 Reconstruction  What is it?  When was it?  What happens next?

 Reconstruction:  Industrialization: late 1800s: A huge growth of the economy that made some people very rich but at the expense of workers.  Progressive Era: early 1900s (ends around 1920)

 What problems of society is the government responsible for fixing?

 A hundred thousand people lived in rear tenements in New York City last year. Here is a room neater than the rest. The spice of hot soapsuds is added to the air already tainted with the smell of boiling cabbage, of rags and uncleanliness all about. It makes an overpowering compound.  - How the Other Half Lives by Jacob Riis  Summarize the quote in one sentence.  What did you use to summarize this?

 Progressive Era: The period of time between the 1890s and 1920s when social, political and economic reform occurred in the United States.  Muckrakers: Journalists or photographers who worked to expose the problems of the time like corruption and poverty

 Many urban residents lived in poverty and labored under very hard conditions.  Cities were not set up for the enormous population. › 1 house = families › Lack of fire protection  No indoor plumbing, so waste ended up in the streets. › Contagious diseases spread quickly such as tuberculosis and pneumonia.

 Sharp blades threatened meatpackers  Cotton dust plagues textile workers  Fire was a risk to everyone in tight factory conditions.  Children as young as 6 years old were working in factories to help support struggling families. “Life in a factory is perhaps, with the exception of prison life, the most monotonous life a human being can live”

 Increased production meant that more products were available, but buying them was not always a good idea.  Things found in meat: › Rat dropping › Rats › Borax › Formaldehyde  Medicine consisted of: › Narcotics › Morphine › Opium › Cocaine

 The progressives took action in response to these problems.  Wanted to improve society by › Promoting social welfare › Protecting the environment › Making government more efficient and democratic  Wanted government to solve society’s problems.  Progressives were not a unified group but all shared a commitment to progress and the belief that they could improve society.

 Group of journalists within the Progressive Movement  They uncovered the nation’s problems and wrote about them.  “raked the mud of society” › TheodoreRoosevelt

 Sought to expose city life problems  Conditions in Slums › Muckrakers blamed city governments for failing to provide adequate roads, sewage and power systems, and transportation. › Jacob Riis writes a book to expose “How the Other Half Lives” including disturbing photographs

 Muckrakers exposed terrible working conditions.  Initiative: when everyday American citizens tried to address the problems in the United States by proposing laws & changes  A push for laws where children were required to go to school.

 In 1906, Upton Sinclar wrote The Jungle. › Unsanitary conditions in meatpacking plants  Muckrakers protested that big businesses were growing richer, while small businesses and the poor struggled even harder to survive.

 Desire to make society more moral and more just  Desire to distribute income more equitably  Desire to broaden opportunities for individual advancement  Women were active in progressivism --Suffragettes like Susan B. Anthony

 Progressive reliance on the law  16 th Amendment (1913)—federal income tax  17 th Amendment (1913)—direct election of senators  18 th Amendment (1919)—prohibition  19 th Amendment (1920)—vote for women

 Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Dubois

 Founder of the NAACP  Got a Ph.D from Harvard  Believed in political rights over economic rights  Talented tenth

 Born into Slavery to a white father and a slave mother  Believed it was more important to gain economic rights

 Pretend you are a modern day Muckraker, write an expose on a problem you see in society (at least 1 paragraph)