PROGRESSIVE ERA Factories increase production 1865 2 billion
PROGRESSIVE ERA Factories increase production 1865 – 2 billion 1900 – 13 billion Mail order catalogs Department stores i. e. Macy’s, Marshall Field & Company, and Woolworths
NEWCOMERS 1800 6% of Americans lived in urban areas 1900 40% of Americans lived urban areas African Americans and Rural population move to cities Immigrants often dominated cities, Why? Find work Mingle with other people from their homeland
REASONS FOR URBANIZATION Jobs were the largest draw to move to cities Cities also provided amusement during free time Theaters, Circuses, Football, Baseball, and Department Stores Skyscrapers become symbols of American Prosperity
DIVERSITY 1870 -1920: 12 million immigrants People from Southern Europe, Asia, Mexico, and Canada All brought customs and language to create a diverse American Culture
CONDITIONS IN THE SLUMS Tenements – Crammed living conditions Most densely populated areas in the world New York Tenements – 450, 000 people per sq mile New York Average – 90, 000 people per sq mile
THE JUNGLE In 1906 an author by the name of Upton Sinclair wrote a novel titled “The Jungle”. This novel would highlight the unsanitary working conditions of the time. This novel would be extremely influential in creating reforms to the Food and Drug industries.
“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. There was no place for the men to wash their hands before they ate their dinner, and so they made a practice of washing them in the water that was to be ladled into the sausage. There were the butt-ends of smoked meat, and the scraps of corned beef, and all the odds and ends of the waste of the plants, that would be dumped into old barrels in the cellar and left there. Under the system of rigid economy which the packers enforced, there were some jobs that it only paid to do once in a long time, and among these was the cleaning out of the waste barrels. Every spring they did it; and in the barrels would be dirt and rust and old nails and stale water—and cartload after cartload of it would be taken up and dumped into the hoppers with fresh meat, and sent out to the public’s breakfast. ”
PROGRESSIVE QUOTES "The gospel left behind by [railroad magnate] Jay Gould is doing giant work in our days. Its message is 'get money. Get it quickly. Get it in abundance. Get it dishonestly, if you can, honestly if you must. '" - John D. Rockefeller, age 41, in 1880 …It means merely the liberty of some factory owner to work haggard women over-hours for under-pay and himself to pocket the profits. It means the liberty of the factory owner to close his operatives into some crazy deathtrap on a top floor, where if fire starts, the slaughter is immense. . We propose, on the contrary, to extend governmental power in order to secure the liberty of the wage workers, of the men and women who toil in industry, to save the liberty of the oppressed from the oppressor. Mr. Wilson stands for the liberty of the oppressor to oppress. We stand for the limitation of his liberty not to oppress those who are weaker than himself. " -President Taft
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