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WAS PROGRESSIVE REFORM PROGRESS?

Sample NYS Social Studies Framework Inquiry:

Grade 8

Unit Outcomes

Supporting Question 1: How did urbanization and immigration impact the politics of the time?

Identify the societal and political response to the growth of the immigrant population o Define nativism.

Explain how machine politics evolved Supporting Question 2: Who should be responsible for workers’ safety?

Describe the working conditions that led to the organization of labor Explain the impact of events like the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire and ILGWU

Supporting Question 3: What was the impact of progressive reformers? Define Progressive, reform, muckraker Evaluate whether Progressives were successful in making government more responsive to the

will of the people

8.2 A CHANGING SOCIETY: Industrialization and immigration contributed to the urbanization of America. Problems resulting from these changes sparked the Progressive movement and increased calls for reform. (Standards: 1, 2, 4; Themes: MOV, SOC, TECH, EXCH)

COMPELLING QUESTION: WAS PROGRESSIVE REFORM PROGRESS?8.2c Increased urbanization and industrialization contributed to increasing conflicts over immigration, influenced changes in labor conditions, and led to political corruption.

Students will examine nativism and anti-immigration policies including the Chinese Exclusion Act, the Gentlemen’s Agreement, and immigration legislation of the 1920s.

Students will explore the growth and impacts of child labor and sweatshops.

Students will explore the development of political machines, including Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall.

8.2d In response to shifts in working conditions, laborers organized and employed a variety of strategies in an attempt to improve their conditions.

Students will examine the goals and tactics of specific labor unions including the Knights of Labor, the American Federation of Labor, and the International Workers of the World.

Students will examine key labor events including the Haymarket affair, the Pullman Strike and the International Ladies Garment Workers’ Union strike

8.2e Progressive era reformers sought to address political and social issues at the local, state, and federal levels of government between 1890 and 1920. These efforts brought renewed attention to women’s rights and the suffrage movement and spurred the creation of government reform policies.

Students will examine the Populist Party as a reform effort by farmers in response to industrialization.

Students will investigate reformers and muckrakers such as Jane Addams, Florence Kelley, W. E. B. du Bois, Marcus Garvey, Ida Tarbell, Eugene V. Debs, Jacob Riis, Booker T. Washington, and Upton Sinclair. Student investigations should include the key issues in the individual’s work and the actions that individual took or recommended to address those issues.

Students will explore leaders and activities of the temperance and woman’s suffrage movements.

Students will investigate the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire and the legislative response.

Students will examine state and federal government responses to reform efforts including the passage of the 17th amendment, child labor and minimum wage laws, antitrust legislation, and food and drug

Students will explore the growth and impacts of child labor and sweatshops (8.2c)

Students will investigate the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire and the legislative response (8.2e)

regulations.SUPPORTING QUESTION 1:

How did urbanization and immigration impact the politics of the time?

SUPPORTING QUESTION 2:Who should be responsible for workers’

safety?

SUPPORTING QUESTION 3:What was the impact of progressive

reformers? Formative Assessment: Formative Assessment: Choose two of

the bills passed by the New York State legislature after recommendation by the Factory Investigating Commission. Justify their inclusion in New York State law based on evidence from the texts you’ve read.

Formative Assessment:

Featured Sources: Featured Sources:Text Group 1:Excerpt from The Jungle, by Upton SinclairChild Labor Image Collection Excerpt from “Life in the Shop” by Clara Lemlich

Text Group 2: “Inspector of Buildings” Political CartoonExcerpt from New York Times article “141 Men and Girls Die in Waist Factory Fire…”

“Uprising of the Twenty Thousands”

Featured Sources:

SUMMATIVE PERFORMANCE TASK:TAKING INFORMED ACTION:

Excerpt from The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, Chapter 9

There were the men in the pickle-rooms, for instance, where old Antanas had gotten his death; scarce a one of these that had not some spot of horror on his person. Let a man so much as scrape his finger pushing a truck in the pickle-rooms, and he might have a sore that would put him out of the world; all the joints in his fingers might be eaten by the acid, one by one. Of the butchers and floorsmen, the beef-boners and trimmers, and all those who used knives, you could scarcely find a person who had the use of his thumb; time and time again the base of it had been slashed, till it was a mere lump of flesh against which the man pressed the knife to hold it. The hands of these men would be criss-crossed with cuts, until you could no longer pretend to count them or to trace them. They would have no nails,—they had worn them off pulling hides; their knuckles were swollen so that their fingers spread out like a fan. There were men who worked in the cooking-rooms, in the midst of steam and sickening odors, by artificial light; in these rooms the germs of tuberculosis might live for two years, but the supply was renewed every hour. There were the beef-luggers, who carried two-hundred-pound quarters into the refrigerator-cars; a fearful kind of work, that began at four o’clock in the morning, and that wore out the most powerful men in a few years. There were those who worked in the chilling-rooms, and whose special disease was rheumatism; the time-limit that a man could work in the chilling-rooms was said to be five years. There were the woolpluckers, whose hands went to pieces even sooner than the hands of the pickle-men; for the pelts of the sheep had to be painted with acid to loosen the wool, and then the pluckers had to pull out this wool with their bare hands, till the acid had eaten their fingers off.

Circle unfamiliar words and jot down questions as you read.

Text-Dependent Questions:What does Sinclair mean by “spot of horror

on his person”? What were some of the dangers of working

in these factories?

There were those who made the tins for the canned-meat; and their hands, too, were a maze of cuts, and each cut represented a chance for blood-poisoning. Some worked at the stamping-machines, and it was very seldom that one could work long there at the pace that was set, and not give out and forget himself, and have a part of his hand chopped off. There were the “hoisters,” as they were called, whose task it was to press the lever which lifted the dead cattle off the floor. They ran along upon a rafter, peering down through the damp and the steam; and as old Durham’s architects had not built the killing-room for the convenience of the hoisters, at every few feet they would have to stoop under a beam, say four feet above the one they ran on; which got them into the habit of stooping, so that in a few years they would be walking like chimpanzees. Worst of any, however, were the fertilizer-men, and those who served in the cooking-rooms. These people could not be shown to the visitor,—for the odor of a fertilizer-man would scare any ordinary visitor at a hundred yards, and as for the other men, who worked in tank-rooms full of steam, and in some of which there were open vats near the level of the floor, their peculiar trouble was that they fell into the vats; and when they were fished out, there was never enough of them left to be worth exhibiting,—sometimes they would be overlooked for days, till all but the bones of them had gone out to the world as Durham’s Pure Leaf Lard! Glossary

lard: soft, white pig fat used for cooking

peculiar: characteristic of one person/thing

rafter: wood beams that support a roof rheumatism: a condition that causes pain and swelling in your muscles and joints

Glossarylard: soft, white pig fat used for cooking

peculiar: characteristic of one person/thing

rafter: wood beams that support a roof rheumatism: a condition that causes pain and swelling in your muscles and joints

Guiding Questions:What details do you notice?

What further questions do you have?

Life in the Shop by Clara Lemlich

Lemlich, executive board member of Local 25, sparked the 1909 walkout of shirtwaist makers with her call for a strike. This piece was first published in the New York Evening Journal, November 28, 1909.

First let me tell you something about the way we work and what we are paid. There are two kinds of work - regular, that is salary work, and piecework. The regular work pays about $6 a week and the girls have to be at their machines at 7 o'clock in the morning and they stay at them until 8 o'clock at night, with just one-half hour for lunch in that time.

The shops. Well, there is just one row of machines that the daylight ever gets to - that is the front row, nearest the window. The girls at all the other rows of machines back in the shops have to work by gaslight, by day as well as by night. Oh, yes, the shops keep the work going at night, too.

The bosses in the shops are hardly what you would call educated men, and the girls to them are part of the machines they are running. They yell at the girls and they "call them down" even worse than I imagine the Negro slaves were in the South.There are no dressing rooms for the girls in the shops. They have to hang up their hats and coats - such as they are - on hooks along the walls. Sometimes a girl has a new hat. It never is much to look at because it never costs more than 50 cents, that means that we have gone for weeks on two-cent lunches - dry cake and nothing else.

The shops are unsanitary - that's the word that is generally used, but there ought to be a worse one used. Whenever we tear or damage any of the goods we sew on, or whenever it is found damaged after we are through with it, whether we have done it or not, we are charged for the piece and sometimes for a whole yard of the material.

At the beginning of every slow season, $2 is deducted from our salaries. We have never been able to find out what this is for.

1. Read to self, noting the “gist” in the margins (What information does this text present? What do I learn about the topic as I read?)

2. Explain your “gist” to a partner

3. With your partner, discuss the following text-dependent question:What were working conditions like during the Industrial Era? Use evidence from the three texts to support your answer.

4. Write a one-line protest to gain attention for changing the conditions in one

Glossary

gaslight: light made by burning gas

shirtwaist: ladies’ blouse

unsanitary: dirty, dangerous to health

Guiding Questions:What details do you notice?

What further questions do you have?Text-Dependent Question:

Why do you think this cartoon was created?

141 Men and Girls Die in Waist Factory Fire; Trapped High Up in Washington Place Building; Street Strewn with Bodies;

Piles of Dead Inside New York Times, March 26, 1911, p. 1.

Three stories of a ten-floor building at the corner of Greene Street and Washington Place were burned yesterday, and while the fire was going on 141 young men and women at least 125 of them mere girls were burned to death or killed by jumping to the pavement below.

The building was fireproof. It shows now hardly any signs of the disaster that overtook it. The walls are as good as ever so are the floors, nothing is the worse for the fire except the furniture and 141 of the 600 men and girls that were employed in its upper three stories.

Most of the victims were suffocated or burned to death within the building, but some who fought their way to the windows and leaped met death as surely, but perhaps more quickly, on the pavements below.

At 4:40 o'clock, nearly five hours after the employes in the rest of the building had gone home, the fire broke out. The one little fire escape in the interior was resorted to by any of the doomed victims. Some of them escaped by running down the stairs, but in a moment or two this avenue was cut off by flame. The girls rushed to the windows and looked down at Greene Street, 100 feet below them.

Then one poor, little creature jumped. There was a plate glass protection over part of the sidewalk, but she crashed through it, wrecking it and breaking her body into a thousand pieces. Then they all began to drop. The crowd yelled "Don't jump!" but it was jump or be burned the proof of which is found in the fact that fifty burned bodies were taken from the ninth floor alone.

"It's the worst thing I ever saw," said one old policeman.

Chief Croker said it was an outrage. He spoke bitterly of the way in which the Manufacturers' Association had called a meeting in Wall Street to take measures against his proposal for enforcing better methods of protection for employes in cases of fire.Last night District Attorney Whitman started an investigation not of this disaster alone but of the whole condition which makes it possible for a firetrap of such a kind to exist. Mr. Whitman's intention is to find out if the present laws cover such cases, and if they do not to frame laws that will.How the fire started no one knows. On the three upper floors of the building were 600 employes of the waist company, 500 of whom were girls. The victims mostly Italians, Russians, Hungarians, and Germans were girls and men who had been employed by the firm of Harris & Blanck, owners of the Triangle Waist Company, after the strike in which the Jewish girls, formerly employed, had been become unionized and had demanded better working conditions. The building had experienced four recent fires and had been reported by the Fire Department to the Building Department as unsafe in account of the insufficiency of its exits.What happened inside there were few who could tell with any definiteness. All that those escaped seemed to remember was that there was a flash of flames, leaping first among the girls in the southeast corner of the eighth floor and then suddenly over the entire room, spreading through the linens and cottons with which the girls were working. The girls on the ninth floor caught sight of the flames through the window up the stairway, and up the elevator shaft.

1. Read to self, noting the “gist” in the margins (What information does this text present? What do I learn about the topic as I read?)

2. With your partner, discuss the following text-dependent question:a. Why did the old policeman say, “"It's the worst thing I ever saw,"?

The Uprising of the Twenty Thousands (Dedicated to the Waistmakers of 1909)[From "Let's Sing!", Educational Department, International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, New York

City, N.D.]

In the black of the winter of nineteen nine,When we froze and bled on the picket line,We showed the world that women could fightAnd we rose and won with women's might.

1. Read to self, noting the “gist” in the margins (What information does this text present? What do I learn about the topic as I read?)

2. With your partner, discuss the following text-dependent question:a. Why did the old policeman say, “"It's the worst thing I ever saw,"?

Chorus:Hail the waistmakers of nineteen nine,Making their stand on the picket line,Breaking the power of those who reign,Pointing the way, smashing the chain.

And we gave new courage to the menWho carried on in nineteen tenAnd shoulder to shoulder we'll win through,Led by the I.L.G.W.U.

Formative Assessment: Choose two of the bills passed by the New York State legislature after recommendation by the

Factory Investigating Commission (on the following page). Justify their inclusion in New York State law based on evidence from the texts you’ve read.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Read the text. Be sure to note the text features.

Text-Dependent Questions:1. What was the goal of the International

Ladies Garment Workers’ Union?2. What type of text is this? What is the

purpose of this text?

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________According to University of Missouri-Kansas City professor Douglas O. Linder: "The public outrage over the horrific loss of life at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory led to the creation of a nine-member Factory Investigating Commission. The Commission undertook a thorough examination of safety and working conditions in New York factories. The Commission's recommendations led to what is called 'the golden era in remedial factory legislation.’” The following bills recommended by the Commission in its preliminary report were passed by the Legislature during the session of 1912, and became laws:3. Fire drills.4. Automatic sprinklers.5. Fire prevention; removal of rubbish; fire-proof receptacles for waste material; protection of gas jets; prohibition of smoking in factories.6. Prohibition of the eating of lunch in rooms where poisonous substances are prepared or generated in the process of manufacture; adequate hot and cold washing facilities for such establishments.

The following bills recommended by the Commission in its second report were enacted into law by the Legislature during the session of 1913:2. Penalties for violation of Labor Law and Industrial Code.3. Fire-proof receptacles; gas jets; smoking.4. Fire alarm signal system and fire drills.5. Fire escapes and exits; limitation of number of occupants; construction of future factory buildings.7. Prohibition of employment of children under fourteen, in cannery sheds or tenement houses; definition of factory building; definition of tenement house.9. Hours of labor of women in canneries.10. Housing conditions in labor camps maintained in connection with a factory.12. Amendment to Child Labor Law; physical examination before issuance of employment certificate; school record; supervision over issuance of employment certificate.13. Amendment to Compulsory Education Law; school record.14. Night work of women in factories.15. Seats for women in factories.17. Cleanliness of workrooms.18. Cleanliness of factory buildings.19. Ventilation; general; special.20. Washing facilities; dressing rooms; water closets.21. Accident prevention; lighting of factories and workrooms.25. Employment of children in dangerous occupations

Historical Source Citations:

Text Group 1:

Excerpt from The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair. Public Domain; http://www.gutenberg.org/files/140/140-h/140-h.htm#link2HCH0009

Child Labor Image Collection Top Left: 488 Macon, Ga. Lewis W. Hine 1-19-1909. Bibb Mill No. 1 Many youngsters here. Some boys were so small they had to climb up on the spinning frame to mend the broken threads and put back the empty bobbins. Location: Macon, Georgia by Lewis Hine, 1909. http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/ncl2004001388/PP/

Bottom Left: “A view of Ewen Breaker of the Pa. [Pennsylvania] Coal Co. The dust was so dense at times as to obscure the view. This dust penetrates the utmost recesses of the boys' lungs. (See also labels 1927 to 1930 for names of some of these.)” Location: South Pittston, Pennsylvania by Lewis Hine, 1911. http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/ncl2004002615/PP/ Top Right: Two of the tiny workers, a raveler and a looper in Loudon Hosiery Mills. Location: Loudon, Tennessee by Lewis Hine, 1910. http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/ncl2004002560/PP/

“Life in the Shop” by Clara LemlichExcerpted from Leon Stein, ed., Out of the Sweatshop: The Struggle for Industrial Democracy (New York: Quadrangle/New Times Book Company, 1977)Reprinted with permission by The Cornell University Kheel Center http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/trianglefire/primary/testimonials/ootss_claralemlich.html

Text Group 2: Political Cartoon: “Inspector Of Buildings! Record fire for New York, 145 lives lost!!!! Building Fire Proof, Only Fire Escape Collapses. O.K. Inspector.” An editorial cartoon shows a skeletal building inspector with a grim smile approving conditions at the Asch Building. Photographer: Artist Robert Carter, 1911 Cornell University Kheel Center, http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/trianglefire/primary/photosIllustrations/slideshow.html?image_id=775&sec_id=10#screen Excerpt from New York Times article “141 Men and Girls Die in Waist Factory Fire: Trapped High Up in Washington Place Building; Street Strewn with Bodies; Piles of Dead Inside” New York Times, March 26, 1911, p. 1.Transcription from the Cornell University Kheel Center: http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/trianglefire/primary/newspapersmagazines/nyt_032611.html Image of Original Article from New York Times Archives: http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=980CE1D61331E233A25755C2A9659C946096D6CF

Text Group 3:“Uprising of the Twenty Thousands (Dedicated to the Waistmakers of 1909)”, from "Let's Sing!", Educational Department, International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, New York City, N.D. Text and image found at http://www.authentichistory.com/1898-1913/2-progressivism/3-laborreform/1-worker/1909_SM_The_Uprising_of_the_Twenty_Thousands.html#78

Formative Assessment:“After the Triangle Fire: State and National Workplace Safety Reforms”. Political Correction. March 25, 2011. http://politicalcorrection.org/factcheck/201103250003

Supporting ResourcesFull-text of Sinclair’s The Jungle: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/140/140-h/140-h.htm “Bolivia Makes Child Labor Legal, In An Attempt to Make It Safer” by NPR StaffJuly 30, 2014. http://www.npr.org/2014/07/30/336361778/bolivia-makes-child-labor-legal-in-an-attempt-to-make-it-safer Lewis Hine Images of Child Labor: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/search/?q=lewis%20hine The Industrial Revolution in the United States Primary Resource Set: http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/primarysourcesets/industrial-revolution/ Cornell University’s Kheel Center has three online exhibits pertaining to the Industrial Age/Progressive Era:Triangle Fire: http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/trianglefire | Child Labor: http://guides.library.cornell.edu/childlabor | ILGWU: http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/ilgwu Working Conditions Then & Now Text Set: (includes excerpt from the Binghamton Dress Factory Fire news articles): http://expandingtext.weebly.com/working-conditions.html

Supporting Question 1: How did urbanization and immigration impact the politics of the time?“’Walking-Around Money’: How Machine Politics Works in America Today” by Jeffery Smith, The Atlantic. June 12, 2013.http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/06/walking-around-money-how-machine-politics-works-in-america-today/276503/ Supporting Question 3: What was the impact of progressive reformers? “How to Muckrake in Cyberspace, Part I: Corporations”. By Kim Green, Mother Jones. March 3, 1997http://www.motherjones.com/politics/1997/03/how-muckrake-cyberspace-part-i-corporations “How to Muckrake in Cyberspace, Part II: Congress”. By Keith Hammond, Mother Jones. March 24, 1997http://www.motherjones.com/politics/1997/03/how-muckrake-cyberspace-part-ii-congress PBS Frontline: Modern Meathttp://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/meat/