“Friends” to the Poor

Political Bosses and Machines

• Helped the urban poor through:– Housing– Food baskets– Education– Medicine– Funerals

All they wanted in exchange:

VOTES!These friends took kickbacks (payment or money from a job)

Practiced graft (getting power or $ through illegal or dishonest means)

Who were they getting it from?

The people who were bad to the poor!

Muckrakers• Can we guess

what it means?– term attributed to Teddy R.– ...the Man with the Muck-rake, the

man who could look no way but downward, with the muck-rake in his hand; who was offered a celestial crown for his muck-rake, but who would neither look up nor regard the crown he was offered, but continued to rake to himself the filth of the floor.

– People who publicize injustices:

• Political corruption• Child labor

Jacob Riis

• Jacob Riis writes How the Other Half Lives– Read quote from p.

262• T.R. calls him “the most useful

citizen of New York”• We’ll talk more later this week

Upton Sinclair

• writes The Jungle

– Describes life of immigrant family working in Chicago

Lincoln Steffens

• Writes The Shame of the Cities– Born into riches

(dad of a California businessman)

– Graduates from UC Berkeley, exposed to new political views

Thomas Nast

• Political cartoonist

• Inventor of Santa Claus as we know him today

• Invents Republican party symbol of elephant

Jane Addams & Settlement Houses

• Hull House– Provides help to the

poor

• Who were the poor?– Immigrants– Orphans, widows

• Settlement houses:– Learn English, skills,

cooking