The+Progressive+Era

The Progressive Era was a time in American History that brought about many government changes. Even though this was a time of great progress for the country with the advancements of technology and waves of new immigrants coming to America, but with these advancements brought problems. Check out the rest of the page to find out more.

**Industry**
====Factories were a place that many considered sweat shops. These places were very cramped and unsafe for workers. Many were not equipped with fire escapes and ventilation that make it a safe environment to work in. Check out the images below.==== Factory owners liked to hirer women and children because they knew that they could pay less for their work. Also, children were able to reach into tight spaces that adults could not reach. This often times made it hazardous for the children and their working environment. Along with the working conditions, factories produced a lot of pollution into the air. Laws were not in place during this time and often factories would produce smoke, pollute water or cut down trees in the name of progress. Over time, this caused people to want to see change in the ways factories did business.

=**Muckrakers**= ==**Muckrakers were hoping that by exposing the wrongs going on in the country that people would push for change. Eventually laws were put in place to help make the injustice and corruption from happening.**==

== =Upton Sinclair exposed the unsanitary conditions of the meat packing industry in his book //The Jungle.// Read a portion of the book to learn what was exposed about this industry.= Cut up by the two-thousand-revolutions- a-minute flyers, and mixed with half a ton of other meat, no odor that ever was in a ham could make any difference. There was never the least attention paid to what was cut up for sausage; there would come all the way back from Europe old sausage that had been rejected, and that was moldy and white – it would be dosed with borax and glycerin, and dumped into the hoppers, and made over again for home consumption. There would be meat that had tumbled out on the floor, in the dirt and sawdust, where the workers had tramped and spit uncounted billions of consumption germs. There would be meat stored in great piles in rooms; and the water from leaky roofs would drip over it, and thousands of rats would race about on it. It was too dark in these storage places to see well, but a man could run his hand over these piles of meat and sweep off handfuls of the dried dung of rats. These rats were nuisances, and the packers would put poisoned bread out for them; they would die, and then rats, bread, and meat would go into the hoppers together. This is no fairy story and no joke; the meat would be shoveled into carts, and the man who did the shoveling would not trouble to lift out a rat even when he saw one – there were things that went into the sausage in comparison with which a poisoned rat was a tidbit. There was no place for the men to wash their hands before they ate their dinner, and so they made a practice of washing them in the water that was to be ladled into the sausage. There were the butt-ends of smoked meat, and the scraps of corned beef, and all the odds and ends of the waste of the plants, that would be dumped into old barrels in the cellar and left there.
 * Ida Tarbell exposed the S **** tanda **** rd **** Oil company and its hold on the Oil industry and how it controlled the price of oil and charge higher prices. Her efforts caused Trust corporations to bust up and branch into smaller companies to causes more competition in the market with the Sherman Anti Trust Act - passed by Teddy Roosevelt. **

=Because of the efforts of Sinclair and president Roosevelt, laws were passed to make the meat packing industry safer and sanitary.=

***The Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act
=Jacob Riis= Riis wanted the public to be made aware of how many people in the urban areas were living in filthy living conditions. Many families such as immigrants lived in tenements that were unsafe and provide no fire escapes. =New Amendments= media type="file" key="16th, 17th, 18, and 19th amendment.mp4" width="300" height="300"