Urban and Social Reforms
Essential Question:
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How did problems in the Gilded Afe contribue to “progressive” reforms in the early 20th century
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The United States entered the Progressive Era
from 1890 to 1920 when a variety of reformers tried to clean up problems created during the Gilded Age -
in the 1800s many middle-class protestant christians embrased the social gospel movement
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The Social Gospel taught that to honor god people must help others and reform society
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Progressive reform began in American cities in response to slums, tenements, child labor, alcohol abuse, prostitution, and political corruption
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An early reformer was Jane Addams who crated Hull House in Chicago
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Hull House was the first settlement house which offered baths, cheap food, child care, job training, health care to help poor.
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Jane Addams’ efforts inspired reformers in other cities to build settlement houses to assist the poor
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Urban reformers tried to improve the lives of poor workers and children
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The YMCA created gyms and libraries to help young men and children
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The Salvation Army created nurseries and soup kitchens
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Florence Kelley fought to create child labor laws and limiting women to 10 hour days.
Many reformers saw alcohol abuse as serious problem
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Temperance Reformers hoped that ending alcohol would reduce corruption, crime, and help assimilate immigrants
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Reformers Frances Willard and Carrie Nation led
the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) to fight for prohibition laws -
Investigative Journalists known as muckrakers exposed corruption poverty health hazards, and monopolies
What did Jacob Riis’ How the Other Half Lives (1890) expose?
- Exposed urban poverty and life in the slums
What did Ida Tarbell’s The History of Standard Oil (1904) expose?
- Revealed rockefeller’s ruthless business practices and called for the breakup of large monopolies
What did Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle (1906) expose?
- corruption in food industry
Child Labor
- Child labor was prevalent during this time
The National Child Labor committee was formed in 1904
- Lewis W Hine took more than 5100 photographs documenting the working conditions
- The Gilded Age brought new opportunities for women and new ideas about personal rights
- Women lived independently in cities as secrataries, store clerks, telephone operators
- More girls graduated from high school and attended universities