Progressivism Goal 3: Promoting Social Welfare

New Seats! Don’t Get Comfortable!

Bell-Ringer:

What issue that affects the lives of ordinary Americans do you most care about? Why is this issue important to you and what do you want to change about it?

Protecting Social Welfare

• Improve the harsh conditions of industrialization

• Service the poor and immigrants• Promote women’s rights and equality outside

home• Consumer Protection• Advocate African-American rights

Improving Industrial Conditions

• Florence Kelley and the inspection of factories

• Prohibition of child labor

• Limiting working hours• Raising wages• Installing safety

standards

Women’s Rights

• Advocating for higher education of women

• Women’s suffrage– Begins at state level– Bringing cases to court– Pushing for national

constitutional amendment• Nineteenth Amendment

(1919) grants women the vote

Servicing the Poor• Social Gosepl Movement and

Settlement Houses (i.e. Hull House):– Community Centers– Churches– Education– Social services (daycare,

extracurriculars)• YMCA (libraries, sports leagues)• Salvation Army: soup kitchens,

nurseries, instruction in middle-class values (hard work, thrift, temperance)

African-American Rights• Presidential leadership on

issue is weak• Two key leaders:

– Booker T. Washington: black schools, accommodates segregationists, accepts discrimination

– W.E.B. DuBois: founds NAACP and advocates full equality and end to segregation

Consumer Protection• Publication of Jungle by

muckraker Upton Sinclair leads to Meat Inspection Act– Strict cleanliness

• Lax drug regulations and pharmaceutical practices produces Pure Food and Drug Act– Halts sale of contaminated

foods and drugs– Truth in labeling of products