Muckrakers (8th Period) by Melissa Fusi

Biography and Works:

mfusi — 2022-09-07 15:06:09 UTC

Jacob Riis was a journalist and social documentary photographer. He was born in Denmark in 1849 and immigrated to the US as a young adult (21 years old). "Like the hundreds of thousands of other immigrants who fled to New York in pursuit of a better life, Riis was forced to take up residence in one of the city's notoriously cramped and disease-ridden tenements. Living in squalor and unable to find steady employment, Riis worked numerous jobs, ranging from a farmhand to an ironworker, before finally landing a role as a journalist-in-training at the New York News Association." His most notable work "How the Other Half Lives" was published in 1890. He wrote about and photographed slum conditions of immigrant workers in New York City.

Photograph A (Riis)

mfusi — 2022-09-07 15:06:18 UTC

Photograph B (Riis)

mfusi — 2022-09-07 15:06:25 UTC

Photograph C (Riis)

mfusi — 2022-09-07 15:06:33 UTC

Photograph D (Riis)

mfusi — 2022-09-07 15:06:40 UTC

Photograph E (Riis)

mfusi — 2022-09-07 15:06:47 UTC

Photograph F (Riis)

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Photograph G (Riis)

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Response to Riis' Work

mfusi — 2022-09-07 15:07:07 UTC

As governor of New York, Riis’s friend Theodore Roosevelt (future president of the US) appointed a Tenement House Commission, which led in 1901 to the creation of the Tenement House Department, headed by another Riis friend, Robert de Forest of the Charity Organization Society. Riis and this circle of municipal citizen-reformers, which included social welfare activists Josephine Shaw Lowell and Lillian Wald, worked to gather statistical evidence and raise public awareness. They advocated for new housing designs to ease crowding and improve fire safety, sanitation, and access to air and light.

Reflection Questions:

mfusi — 2022-09-07 15:07:17 UTC

1. Jacob Riis used photographs to expose the terrible living conditions of poor working immigrants in New York City tenements. Pick one image that looks the worst to you. Identify which image (Photograph A-G) you chose. Explain what was wrong with the living conditions depicted in the image you chose.
2. Jacob Riis took several pictures of poor children. Pick one of these images and explain your reaction to it. What does it make you think, feel or wonder?
3. If you were a wealthy American in 1890, how would you react to seeing Jacob Riis' photographs? Explain.
4. Do you consider Riis' work successful? Explain.

Biography and Works

mfusi — 2022-09-07 15:48:13 UTC

John Spargo was born in England in 1876. He became a Methodist minister and immigrated to the US as an adult in 1901. He settled in New York and began preaching. He spent his life helping the working class poor of New York city. He established a "settlement house" to provide social and economic support to new immigrants. Spargo was shocked by the living and working conditions of the poor, especially children. Spargo was a founding member of the American Socialist Party and published several works including: "The Bitter Cry of the Children" 1905, "The Underfed School Children" 1906, "The Common Sense of the Milk Question" 1908.

"The Bitter Cry of the Children" 1905 John Spargo

mfusi — 2022-09-07 16:14:00 UTC

“The coal is hard, and accidents to the hands, such as cut, broken, or crushed fingers, are common among the boys. Sometimes there is a worse accident: a terrified shriek is heard, and a boy is mangled and torn in the machinery. . . . Clouds of dust . . . are inhaled by the boys, laying the foundation for asthma and miners’ consumption.”

"The Bitter Cry of the Children" 1905

mfusi — 2022-09-07 16:14:06 UTC

"Work in the coal breakers (processing plant) is exceedingly hard and dangerous. Crouched over the chutes, the

boys sit hour after hour, picking out the pieces of slate and other refuse from the coal as it rushes past to the

washers. From the cramped position they have to assume, most of them become more or less deformed and

bent-backed like old men. When a boy has been working for some time and begins to get round-shouldered, his

fellows say that “He’s got his boy to carry round wherever he goes."

Reflection Questions:

mfusi — 2022-09-07 16:14:12 UTC

1. John Spargo wrote "The Bitter Cry of the Children" about children working in coal mines. Copy one line that you think is the most interesting description of children working in coal mines.
2. What is your reaction to the excerpts from Spargo's work "The Bitter Cry of the Children"? Explain
3. What is your opinion about child labor during industrialization? Explain
4. Do you think Spargo's work was successful? Do you think it would convince people to help end child labor? Explain

Biography and Works

mfusi — 2022-09-07 16:15:34 UTC

Working as an investigative photographer for the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC), Lewis Hine (1874-1940) documented working and living conditions of children in the United States between 1908 and 1924. The NCLC photos are useful for the study of labor, reform movements, children, working class families, education, public health, urban and rural housing conditions, industrial and agricultural sites, and other aspects of urban and rural life in America in the early twentieth century.
Founded in 1904, the National Child Labor Committee set out on a mission of "promoting the rights, awareness, dignity, well-being and education of children and youth as they relate to work and working." Starting in 1908, the Committee hired Lewis W. Hine (1874-1940), first on a temporary and then on a permanent basis, to carry out investigative and photographic work for the organization. The more than 5,100 photographic prints and 355 glass negatives in the Prints and Photographs Division's holdings, together with the often extensive captions that describe the photo subjects, reflect the results of this early documentary effort, offering a detailed depiction of working and living conditions of many children--and adults--in the United States between 1908 and 1924.

Hine later referred to his photographic work for the NCLC as "detective work." Photo historian Daile Kaplan offers this picture of how Hine conducted his work, which was frequently regarded with suspicion by business owners, supervisors, and workers:

Nattily dressed in a suit, tie, and hat, Hine the gentleman actor and mimic assumed a variety of personas--including Bible salesman, postcard salesman, and industrial photographer making a record of factory machinery--to gain entrance to the workplace. When unable to deflect his confrontations with management, he simply waited outside the canneries, mines, factories, farms, and sweatshops with his fifty pounds of photographic equipment and photographed children as they entered and exited the workplace. (Photo Story: Selected Letters and Photographs of Lewis W. Hine. Ed. by Daile Kaplan. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992).

Photograph A (Hine)

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Photograph B (Hine)

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Photograph C (Hine)

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Photograph D (Hine)

mfusi — 2022-09-07 16:15:59 UTC

Photograph E

mfusi — 2022-09-07 16:16:05 UTC

Response to Spargo & Hines

mfusi — 2022-09-07 16:16:11 UTC

As a result of the growing sentiment against child labor, the Keating-Owen Act was passed. It was created in 1916 and was the first federal law to regulate child labor. The National Child Labor Committee, who helped sponsor the law, was an organization with the goal of spreading awareness of the horrible conditions of children labor. They would spread awareness through images and pictures in attempt to end child labor.

Reflection Questions:

mfusi — 2022-09-07 16:16:17 UTC

1. Lewis Hine worked for 20 years taking photographs of children working across the US. In your opinion, which picture has the greatest impact on you?
2. Pick an image and describe how it makes you feel/what it makes you think. Identify the picture you were working on (Photograph A-D).
3. What is your opinion about child labor after looking at the photographs?
4. Do you think Lewis Hine's work was successful? Explain

Biography and Works:

mfusi — 2022-09-07 16:17:09 UTC

Upton Sinclair was a famous novelist and social crusader from California, who pioneered the kind of journalism known as "muckraking." His best-known novel was "The Jungle" which was an expose of the appalling and unsanitary conditions in the meat-packing industry.

"The Jungle" 1906 (Excerpt A)

mfusi — 2022-09-07 16:17:15 UTC

“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 [a white powder made from boric acid, used in detergents, flame retardants, and disinfectants] and glycerine [a chemical compound used in foods and medicines], and dumped into the hoppers [containers for mixing], 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. . . . 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 [containers] 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.”

Response to Sinclair's work

mfusi — 2022-09-07 16:17:27 UTC

When The Jungle was published, the nation reacted in horror. After reading the novel, President Theodore Roosevelt ordered an immediate investigation into the meat industry, though privately he told Sinclair that he disliked the Socialist polemic near the end of the novel. Within months, two pieces of legislation resulted from Sinclair's novel: The Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act, both signed into law on June 30^th, 1906. Sinclair was an instant celebrity and a Socialist hero, and was finally financially stable. He lamented the fact that the nation focused only on the unsafe food handling aspect of his novel, and ignored the problem of labor exploitation. He famously quipped: "I aimed at the public's heart and by accident I hit it in the stomach."

Reflection Questions:

mfusi — 2022-09-07 16:17:33 UTC

1. What is your reaction to excerpt A? What does it make you think/feel?
2. What is your reaction to excerpt B? What does it make you think/feel?
3. What do you think about the working conditions in factories during industrialization?
4. Was Sinclair's work successful? Explain.

"The Jungle" 1906 (Excerpt B)

mfusi — 2022-09-07 16:19:33 UTC

“...There were the men in the pickle rooms, for instance, where old Antanas had gotten his death; scare a one of these that had not some spot of horror on his person. Let a man so much as scrape his finger pushing a truck in the pickle rooms, and he might have a sore that would put him out of the world [lead to his death]; all of the joints in his fingers might be eaten by the acid, one by one. Of the butchers and floorsmen, the beef boners and trimmer, and all those who used knives, you could scarcely find a person who had the use of his thumb; time and time again the base of it had been slashed, till it was a mere lump of flesh against which the man pressed the knife to hold it. The hands of these men would be criss-crossed with cuts, until you could no longer pretend to count them or trace them. They would have no nails, - they had worn them off pulling hides; their knuckles were swollen so that their fingers spread out like a fan. There were men who worked in the cooking rooms, in the midst of steam and sickening odors, by artificial light; in these rooms the germs of tuberculosis might live for two years, but the supply was renewed every hour. There were the beef luggers, who carried two hundred pound quarters into the refrigerator cars, a fearful kind of work, that began at four o’clock in the morning, and that wore out the most powerful men in a few years…”

Crisma's group

2022-09-14 21:36:57 UTC

1.the boys sit hour after hour,picking out the pieces of slate and other refuse from the pieces of slate and other refuse from the coal as it rushes past to the washers.
2.Children spent hours after hours sitting down working shortening their lives.
3.It is sad because they do not have a childhood and cannot enjoy their childhood because they are working.
4.If it was successful because people took courage and raised their voices to end child labor.

Rubi

ruburz55381 — 2022-09-14 21:40:54 UTC

1. Image E is the worst since the buildings look like they are in very bad conditions. It seems as if they are going to collapse and the materials look very old and weak.
2. Image D is the worst because the kids are sleeping on the streets. The kids also look like they are cold, dirty and they look very sad.
3. If we were a wealthy American in 1890 after seeing the pictures that Jacob Rii's took we would be in shock and sad because of the situation those families and kids are going through.
4. We consider Rii's work successful because it shows other peoples wretched lives so others could see what they were going through. Also because it promotes for others to try and make a change in society.

Jesus

2022-09-14 21:42:31 UTC

1. It made me feel disgusted, knowing that they had no hygiene when making food for people
2. It makes me feel bad because it seems that the workers did not have experience and that is why they cut themselves and hurt themselves when cutting
3. The working conditions were very bad and unhygienic.
4. yes and no, because he got the government to make laws about food hygiene and handling conditions, but what he wanted was for the government to do something against people's working conditions

Santiago Robles

2022-09-14 21:45:51 UTC

1. For our opinion, the picture's greatest impact on my group is the picture C, because in the picture C we see a little kid working and we get very sad for me and my group because it is a child..
2. My group and I will show the picture D. My group and I say this picture is sad because these girls stay along in this factory, and because this factory have in bad condition.
3. The opinion for me and my group is that these pictures are very sad because the children in this pictures start to work when they stay with little kids, and they not go to school because they need to work for necessary.
4. My group and I think Lewis Heine's work was successful because he work for the children's and protect their rights.

Jesus

2022-09-14 21:51:45 UTC

1. picture C
2. image C is the one that makes me feel bad the most, due to the fact that the child is not more than 7 years old and is working in an unsafe way
3. in my opinion children do not have to work in heavy jobs and in no other job they have to study at that age
4. Lewis Hine's work was successful since the Keating-Owen law was approved, which was the first law against child labor

Crisma's group

2022-09-14 21:52:07 UTC

1. The photo C is the one that conveys the most sadness because it is a small child.
2.The photo C conveys sadness and frustration at the same time, because it is very surprising that a child of such a young age works so hard.
3.It is very sad, annoying and impotence that in those times they could not do anything for those children, and their parents preferred to send them to work for a few cents.
4. Yes, because people raised their voices and in this way the government definitively finished with him child labor.

ruburz55381 — 2022-09-14 21:56:13 UTC

1. In our opinion the picture that has the greatest impact on us is photograph C because the kid looks very young and small. He also looks very tired and has huge eye bags. The kid also looks very sad and confused.
2. Image B makes us feel sad because of the conditions of that kid. He looks dirty, tired, sick, and also looks like he has an injury on his face.
3. Our opinion on child labor is very sad for kids since they are not enjoying their childhood. It's also not fair for kids to be working when they should be at school or playing. We also feel very sad because they look very sad for seeing what they go through.
4. We think that Lewis Hine's work was successful because it showed people how factories or other jobs were exploting children into working.

Alejandro Nunez

2022-09-14 21:57:03 UTC

1. I choose Image D because in this picture we see a little kids sleeping in floor.
2. I think the picture A is a bad conditions because has alot of persons live in a single room.
3. If a wealthy american in 1890 i feel sad because they not have the same thing of me.
4.Riis was succcessful because he show of the people the real life.

2022-09-14 21:57:59 UTC

Francisco 
1.“Coal is hard, and accidents to the hands, such as cut, broken or crushed fingers, are common among boys".
2.the work makes it clear to us that it was a very dangerous job and that the children were very hurt3.our opinion is that it was very bad because they must be studying not working
4.Yes, because it exposed the harsh conditions that children suffer. The parents would agree because their children would no longer be hurt