Academic Read 2 Paragraphs

Honors ReadAll

Academic Read 2 paragraphs

Four Square on Child Labor: U.S II 4e

As youreadthe Child Labor article you will use this note taking strategy.

Use these symbolsin each paragraph as youread. (highlighters are a good idea)

Yellow Main Idea

Blue Important Detail/Fact

Green Most Interesting

? Confusion/Question

With a partner, discuss whatyou marked inyour paragraphs.
Thenplace3 bullets of information in each four squares below.

Photographs of Lewis Hine: Documentation of Child Labor

Background "There is work that profits children, and there is work that brings profit only to employers. The object of employing children is notto train them, butto get highprofits from their work." -- Lewis Hine, 1908

After the Civil War, the availability of natural resources, new inventions, and a receptive market combined to fuel an industrial boom. The demand for labor grew, and inthe late 19th and early 20th centuries many children were drawn into the labor force. Factory wages weresolow that children often had to work to help support their families. The number of children under the age of 15 who worked in industrial jobs for wages climbed from 1.5 million in 1890 to 2 million in 1910. Businesses liked tohire children because they worked in unskilled jobs for lower wages than adults, and their small hands made them more adept at handling small parts and tools. Children wereseen as part of the family economy. Immigrants and rural migrants often senttheir children to work, or worked alongside them. However, child laborers barely experienced their youth. Going to school to prepare for a better future was an opportunity these underage workers rarely enjoyed. As children worked in industrial settings, they began to develop serious health problems. Many child laborers were underweight. Some suffered from stunted growth and curvature of the spine. They developed diseases related totheir work environment, such as tuberculosis and bronchitis for those who worked incoal mines or cotton mills. They faced high accident rates dueto physical and mental fatigue caused by hard work and long hours.

Bythe early 1900s many Americans were calling child labor "child slavery" and were demanding an end to it. They argued that long hours of work deprived children of the opportunity of an education to prepare themselves for a better future. Instead, child labor condemned them to a future of illiteracy, poverty, and continuing misery. In 1904 a group of progressive reformers founded the National Child Labor Committee, an organization whosegoal was the abolition of child labor. The organization received a charter from Congress in 1907. It hired teams of investigators to gather evidence of children working in harsh conditions and then organized exhibitions with photographs and statistics to dramatize the plight of these children. These efforts resulted inthe establishment in 1912 of the Children's Bureau as a federal information clearinghouse. In 1913 theChildren's Bureau was transferred tothe Department of Labor.

Lewis Hine, a New York City schoolteacher and photographer, believed that a picture could tell a powerful story. He felt so strongly about the abuse of children as workers that he quit his teaching job and became an investigative photographer forthe National Child Labor Committee. Hine traveled around the country photographing the working conditions of children inall types of industries. He photographed children incoal mines, in meatpacking houses, in textile mills, and in canneries. He took pictures of children working inthe streets as shoe shiners, newsboys, and hawkers. In many instances he tricked his way into factories to take the pictures that factory managers did not want the public tosee. He was careful to document every photograph with precise facts and figures. To obtain captions for his pictures, he interviewed the children onsome pretext and then scribbled his notes with his hand hidden inside his pocket.

Hine believed that if people could seefor themselves the abuses and injustice of child labor, they would demand laws to end those evils. By 1916, Congress passedthe Keating-Owens Act that established the following child labor standards: a minimum age of 14 for workers in manufacturing and 16 for workers in mining; a maximum workday of 8 hours; prohibition of night work for workers under age 16; and a documentary proof of age. Unfortunately, this law was later ruled unconstitutional onthe ground that congressional power to regulate interstate commerce did not extend tothe conditions of labor. Effective action against child labor had to await theNew Deal. Reformers, however, did succeed in forcing legislation at the state level banning child labor and setting maximum hours. By 1920 the number of child laborers was cut to nearly half of what it had beenin 1910.

Lewis Hine diedin poverty, neglected byallbut a few. His reputation continued to grow, however, and now he is recognized as a master American photographer.. Hine's images of working children stirred America's conscience and helped change the nation's labor laws. Resources

Foner, Eric, and John A. Garraty, eds. The Reader's Companion to American History. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1991.

Nash, Gary B., et al. The American People: Creating a Nation and a Society. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1990.

Reading Activity U.S II 4e

ReadThe Jungle and write down 5 really Gross.

Read Triangle Shirt Fire and write down 5 Really Bad

Really Gross: The Jungle

Really Bad: Triangle Fire

FromTHE JUNGLE –Upton Sinclair --1906

From Chapter 12

But perhaps the worst of the consequences of this long siege was that they lost another member of their family; Brother Jonas disappeared. One Saturday night he did not come home, and thereafter alltheir efforts to get trace of himwere futile. It was said bythe boss at Durham's that he had gotten his week's money and left there. That mightnotbe true, of course, for sometimes they would say that when a man had been killed; it was the easiest way out of it forall concerned. When, forinstance, a man had fallen into one of the rendering tanks and had beenmade into pure leaf lard and peerless fertilizer, there was nouse letting the fact out and making his family unhappy.

From Chapter 14

With one member trimming beef in a cannery, and another working in a sausage factory, the family had a first-hand knowledge of thegreat majority of Packingtown swindles. For it was the custom, as they found, whenever meat was so spoiled that it could notbe used for anything else, either to can it or else to chop it up into sausage. With what had beentold them by Jonas, who had worked inthe pickle rooms, they could now study thewhole of the spoiled-meat industry onthe inside, and read a new and grim meaning into that old Packingtown jest--that they use everything of the pig exceptthe squeal.

Jonas had told them how themeat that was taken out of pickle would often be found sour, and how they would rub it up with soda to take awaythe smell, and sell it tobe eaten on free-lunch counters; also of allthe miracles of chemistry which they performed, giving to any sort of meat, fresh or salted, wholeor chopped, any color and any flavor and any odor they chose. Inthe pickling of hams they had an ingenious apparatus, bywhich they saved time and increased the capacity of the plant--a machine consisting of a hollow needle attached to a pump; by plunging this needle into themeat and working with his foot, a man could fill a ham with pickle in a few seconds. And yet, in spite of this, therewouldbe hams found spoiled, some of them with an odor so bad that a man could hardly beartobeinthe room with them. To pump into these the packers had a second and much stronger pickle which destroyed the odor--a process known tothe workers as "giving them thirty percent." Also, after the hams had been smoked, therewouldbe found some that had gone tothe bad. Formerly these had been sold as "Number Three Grade," but later onsome ingenious person had hit upon a new device, and now they would extract the bone, about whichthe bad part generally lay, and insert inthehole a white-hot iron. After this invention there was no longer Number One, Two, and Three Grade--there was only Number OneGrade.

Leap for Life, Leap of Death (Triangle Shirt Fire)

275 girls started to collect their belongings as they were leaving work at 4:45 PM on Saturday. Within twenty minutes some of girls' charred bodies were lined up along the East Side of Greene Street. Those girls who flung themselves from the ninth floorwere merely covered with tarpaulins where they hit the concrete. The Bellevue morgue was overrun with bodies and a makeshift morgue was set up onthe adjoining pieronthe East River. Hundred's of parents and family members came to identify their lost loved ones. 146 employees of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company were dead thenight of March 25, 1911. The horror of their deaths ledto numerous changes in occupational safety standards that currently ensurethe safety of workers today.

At thetime of the fire the only safety measures available forthe workers were 27 buckets of water and a fire escape that would collapse when people tried touse them. Most of the doors were locked and those that werenot locked only opened inwards and were effectively held shut bythe onrush of workers escaping the fire. As the clothing materials feed the fire workers tried to escape anyway they could. 25 passengers flung themselves down the elevator shaft trying to escape the fire. Their bodies rained blood and coins down onto the employees who made it into the elevator cars. Engine Company 72 and 33 werethe first onthescene. Toaddtothe already bleak situation the water streams from their hoses could only reach the 7th floor. Their ladders could only reach between the 6th and 7th floor. 19 bodies were found charred against the locked doors. 25 bodies were found huddled in a cloakroom. These deaths, although horrible, was notwhat changed the feelings toward government regulation. Upon finding that they could notusethe doors to escape and the fire burning at theirclothes and hair, the girls of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company, aged mostly between 13 and 23 years of age, jumped 9 stories totheir death. One after another the girls jumped totheir deaths onthe concrete over one hundred of feet below. Sometimes the girls jumped three and four at a time. On lookers watched in horror as body after body fell tothe earth. "Thud -- dead; thud -- dead; thud -- dead; thud -- dead. Sixty-two thud -- deads. I call them that, because the sound and the thought of death came tome each time, at the same instant," said United Press reporter William Shephard. The bodies of teenage girls lined the street below. Blankets that would-be rescuers used ripped at theweight and the speed the bodies were falling. Fire Department blankets were ripped when multiple girls tried to jump into the same blanket. Some girls tried to jump tothe ladders that could not reach the ninth floor. None reached the ladders. The fire escape inthe rear of the building collapsed and trapped the employees even more.

Many people were outraged at the tragedy. The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire helped to solidify support for workers' unions like the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union. The owners, Isaac Harris and Max Blanck, were tried for manslaughter butwere acquitted in 1914. Though most people were disgusted with what had happened, therewereno regulations ineffect that wouldhave saved lives.

The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire of 1911 still remains one of the most vivid and horrid tragedies that changed American Labor Unions and labor laws. The fire had come only five years after Upton Sinclair published his book The Jungle, which detailed the plight of the workers at a meat packer's plant. But instead of reforming the working conditions most people wanted to reform the health and safety regulations on food. The tragic death of 146 girls, whose average age was 19, was needed before the politicians and the people sawfortheneedto regulate safety inthe workplace.

The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire of 1911 wouldchange the regulation by government of business. Before the fire government had mostly stayedaway from business feeling it had no power to legislate it. After the fire government could not avoid instituting laws to protect the workers. Once theNew York legislature enacted safety laws, other states inthe US followed suit. Workers also began to look toward unions to voice their concerns over safety and pay. Samuel Gompers of the AFL had won a lot of trust and admiration by sitting inonThe Factory Commission of 1911. The International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union also won support and led a march of 100,000 to tell theNew York legislature to move into action. Unfortunately not everyone had learned their history. March 25, 1990, onthe 79th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, the Happy Land Social Club fire inthe Bronx, New York killed 87 people. Most of the people killed werenot workers but customers. There was no sprinkler system, fire alarms, nor exits. The windows had iron bars on them leaving only onedoorto escape the inferno. On September 3, 1991 in Hamlet North Carolina 25 workers died at a poultry factory. The exits were ill marked, blocked or padlocked. The doors were padlocked to prevent theft. The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire remains as a turning point in US history. Countless state and federal laws were enacted because of this incident. Unions gained numerous new workers who wanted someone to fight fortheir safety. Now employers inthe US have a clear set of guidelines that they needto follow toensurethe safety of their employees.

Progressive Presidents chart: U.S II 4e

Directions: As you watch the video clips, write down 3 main points about each president.

Progressive Presidents U.S II 4e; 5b

Teddy Roosevelt / William Howard Taft / Woodrow Wilson

Expected

Unexpected

The Progressive Movement

The Progressive Movement was a group of people asking for reforms. A reform is a change for the better. Reformers wanted to reform factories, business, and government to make life better for the people.

Sometimes when workers did not get what they wanted, they went on strike. When they went on strike, they stopped working so that the factory owners would listen to them. Workers joined labor unions to work together to make factories safer. Sometimes labor unions joined the American Federation of Labor, which was a large group of unions that worked together for workplace reforms. The workplace reforms were the minimum wage, accident insurance, fewer hours, and less child labor.

President Theodore Roosevelt helped make laws to control business. He called his program the Square Deal. There were new laws to stop big companies from taking over small companies. Big companies could not set prices, and the government checked to see if prices were too high. They also helped get new laws that protected workers.

The Progressives wanted to make the government more honest. Robert La Follette wanted the government to hire workers based on a merit system. A merit system is when people are hired based on their qualifications rather than by favors to friends or family members. Progressives made the hiring of government officials more honest.

The Progressives also helped make changes about voting and elections. State laws made voting secret. Elections became more honest because people could vote freely. Women still did not have the right to vote. Susan B. Anthony and other women worked for women’s suffrage. Women got the right to vote from the 19th Amendment in 1920.

Many women also supported the Temperance Movement, which wanted to stop the use of alcohol. The temperance movement supported the 18th Amendment. The 18th Amendment stopped people from making, selling, or transporting alcohol. The 18th Amendment was passed and became law in 1919.

Progressive Reformers Matching

U.S II 4e

5 Booker T. Washington / 1. Helped thepoorby starting a settlement house. Settlement houses offered daycare, English lessons, and a safe placefor children to play.
3 Carrie Nation / 2. Foughtfor women’s rightto vote along with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Alice Paul.
4 Samuel Gompers / 3. Axe swinging grandmother who crusaded for temperance (stopping or limiting theuse of alcohol).
8 Ida Tarbell / 4. Cigar maker who started the American Federation of Labor union to fight for better salary and safer work places.
10 Jacob Riis / 5. Started a college where African Americans could learn trades (plumbers, electrician, etc.) in order toearn enough money to gain political equality with whites.
1 Jane Addams / 6. The first African American with a doctorate from Harvard. Organized National Association forthe Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) to fight for equal rights.
2 Susan B. Anthony / 7. Wrote a book that exposed unhealthy and unsafe practices inthe meatpacking industry.
11 Thomas Nast / 8. An investigative reporter who wrote newspaper articles exposing the unfair business practices of John D. Rockefeller and big business.
7 Upton Sinclair / 9. “Trust-buster” who foughtto make foods and drugs safe. He also worked to create national parks to conserve nature.
6 W.E.B. Du Bois / 10. Took photographs exposing the horrors of slum life.
9 Theodore
Roosevelt / 11. Drew cartoons to inform people of corrupt politicians who took bribes and spent tax payer’s money.

Far and Away Activity50 points U.S II 4 b, d, e; 1i

Level 4