Ch. 18 and 19: The Progressive Era 1900-1920

The era's most influential novel that described unsanitary slaughterhouses and the sale of rotten meat stirred public outrage and led directly to the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act of 1906.

March 25, 1911
fire broke out at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company that occupied the top floors of a ten-story building in Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York. the doors to the stairwell were locked. fire hoses could not reach that high in the building. Many onlookers watched as girls jumped to their death.

Although not the worst disaster in history, the impact was important. 20 years later, FDR referred to this as an example of why the government needed to regulate industry.
-created efforts to organize the city's workers accelerated and the state legislature passed new factory inspection laws and fire safety codes.
-also highlighted how traditional gender roles were changing as women took on new responsibilities in the workplace and in the making of public policy.

people began to believe democracy is being corrupted by political machines like bankers and executives
he wrote, "the individual could not hope to compete ... slowly, americans realized that they were not free."