Progressive Movement and Urban Reform

Chicago: 1890 to 1915

Setting the stage

Between 1890 and 1915, the Progressive movement hit America, seeking reform in both national and local politics.

America was in transition from a country of farmers and artisans to a country defined by immigration, industrialization, and urbanization.

Chicago in transition

Problems: Urban slums Poverty Dangerous working

conditions Corruption in

politics Political machines Exploitive

monopolies

Progressivism

Wanted to address these problems of urban centers like Chicago

Many progressive reformers were well-educated and well-informed middle-class Americans, including many women, journalists, small business owners, and college professors.

Common elements of Progressives Promoted social

justice concerns Faith in

government intervention in society

“Gospel of efficiency”

Order and organization

Progressive beliefs Good government should be honest,

efficient, and managed by professional public servants.

Progressive reform sought: Moral reform▪ Get rid of prostitution and gambling and those who

allowed it Urban political reform▪ Get rid of corruption, bribery, patronage, and fraud

Civic reform▪ Make Chicago a safer, cleaner, better place to live

Local writers and ExposésMuckrakers and Upton Sinclair

Muckrakers

Progressive movement fueled by writers and journalists who were called muckrakers.

Exposed the dirty, seedy, and unethical happenings of life in America

Brought about a feeling of moral outrage

Upton Sinclair

Began as a journalist for a socialist newspaper

Came to Chicago in 1905 to investigate the Union Stock Yards and the meatpacking industry

Sinclair’s task

Expose the meatpacking industry

Expose the exploitative relationship between owners and employees

Intended for his work to support socialism

Sinclair’s book The novel, The Jungle,

published in 1906 Books tells the story of

an immigrant who comes to America and works in the Union Stock Yards of Chicago Main character: Jurgis

Rudkus gets crushed by the vicious capitalist system.

Jurgis converts to socialism

Response to the Jungle

Readers did not remember this book for Sinclair’s argument for socialism but rather for: exposing the unimaginable filth that could be found on a daily basis at meatpacking plants.

Exposed the meatpacking industry for packaging contaminated, spoiled, unclean, and occasionally doctored meat.

Roosevelt Connection!

President Theodore Roosevelt began to push for new federal laws Health standards on

the meat packing industry

Passed the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906.

Local writing

British writer and reformer William T. Stead came to Chicago for the Columbian Exposition.

He was appalled by the rampant vice he found here. He told of what he saw in his 1894 book, If Christ Came to Chicago.

If Christ Came to Chicago Stead described

Chicago as a city full of materialistic young men.

Called local society women selfish and lazy

He believed Jesus would not like Chicago

What the book exposed

Stead was appalled by Chicago’s famed “Levee,” known then as the “most notorious red-light district in the nation”– Jon C. Teaford 200 brothels, countless saloons, dance

halls, pawn shops and gambling clubs

The Everleigh Club: a local institution, a “classy and respectable brothel”

Effects of the book?

The Chicago Tribune called it “a directory of sin”

Sold 10,000 copies locally right away Generated publicity but little in the

way of actual reform Most Chicago politicians avoided moral

reform and ideas of the Progressives Regulation of vice, confined to the

boundaries of the Levee.