Jacob Riis

There were many muckrakers that spoke out against corruption and other things. Many of them caught a lot of peoples attention. One photographer, Jacob Riis, formed a book of pictures that captured the life that the poor exist in. He showed what corruption was causing throughout the nation. He really captured tenement life especially well. His book was called, How the Other Half Lives. The pictures inside it were truly shocking. Below are few pictures from the book.

This is a picture of Children sleeping on the streets in New York. 

These children are seen huddling for warmth by a window.

The two pictures above showed life for people in tenements. Tenements are buildings divided into many tiny apartments. As you can see there were many people cramped inside these tenements that were much too small for them.

Jacob Riis named these horrible houses, the Dens of Death. 

Jacob Riis called this picture Bandits Roost.

People actually had to live in these sheds.

So as you can see the life some people had to live was really horrible. This is what corruption was causing for people, the majority of people.  Jacob Riis main goal was so that tenement life and life in the slums would be reformed.

Power

Progressivist believed that power came from the bottom up. I think that this can be true but also Can be false. Let me explain. Money=Power. The more money you have, the more influence your opinions have. The more money you have the more opportunities you have to make more. If I could take out an interest free loan for $3,000,000 I could set up a successful company and repay the loan to start making a profit. If you already have that much money to spend on a company then it is a simple investment that may or may not pay off. The point is that a person making $100,000 annually can't afford to take that risk and therefore the person who can has more of an opportunity to make more money. Just like power, money corrupts. Plenty of politicians sellout. Rod Blagovich is a recent example. He offered an open senate seat for the right price. Almost everyone could always use a few thousand more dollars. Politicians are no different. If Money=Power then the 1% are far more powerful than the 99%. If you ask me that sounds like power coming from the top down, not the bottom up. This statement of power being at the bottom and us giving it to elected officials is also true. No politician wants to make an unpopular decision. If they do they could lose their job next election season. This is the pinnacle of the power coming from the bottom up. Politicians are guided by the voters will because if they decide to do something the masses don't agree with, they lose all their power. It is a funny thing. We give the politicians power, who in turn give us power, and then we give them power again. It's like a game of power hot potato. Except everyone wants the potato but if they hold it too long then they are out. I believe power comes from the top down and the bottom up.

Chapter 19 Overview

Chapter 19 is about people wanting justice and freedom in America. It makes sense considering that that is what we expect of it today. It is suppose to be fair and everyone is supposed to have the same rights. In Chapter 19 women, African-Americans, Mexican-Americans, and Asian-Americans all fought for equal rights as the white males. It is also about corruption and big business being exposed. Muckrakers worked everyday to find out if anyone was cheating the public of what they pay for. Ida M. Tarbell tried to expose Rockefeller's unfair business methods. Jacob Riis showed the public shocking images of slum life. Upton Sinclair wrote "The Jungle" to let everyone know about how the meatpacking industry wasn't sanitary. All of these people wanted these injustices to stop. Also, in Chapter 19 they talk about the U.S.'s first progressive presidents. Theodore Roosevelt was referred to as a trustbuster. He attempted to destroy all monopolies and trusts. William Howard Taft approved new safety rules for mines, gave government workers an eight hour work day, and helped oversee the regulation of child labor. Woodrow Wilson persuaded congress to create the FTC to investigate companies and make them stop using unfair trading practices. Not to mention that he stopped anti-trust laws from being used against unions. Prohibition went into effect in this chapter. It was to try and control the reckless use of alcohol. It had good intentions even if you don't agree with it. This is what Chapter 19 is about. It is about an attempt to make America less corrupt and the land of the free.

Other Reforms

While the progressives were trying to make changes in areas of corruption and business, some reformers tried to change things in other areas. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony were seeking change in women's suffrage. Together they created the NWSA, the National Woman Suffrage Association. They wanted a constitutional amendment giving women the right to vote anywhere. Suffragists were spread across the nation trying to win women the right to vote. Slowly but surely more and more states were giving the women the right to vote. Finely, after Alice Paul wen to President Woodrow Wilson and told him that they were committed to getting an amendment signed, the 19th amendment was signed. This was a big victory women. Another place that people were trying to force change was justice for African Americans.  Booker T. Washington and W.E.B Du Bois were the two most know leaders speaking out for African Americans. They both had ideas about how to reform the nation. Booker T. Washington took a very laid back take on it. He advised African Americans to be patient and gradually move up in society. W.E.B Du Bois had a different idea. He thought that a laid back take should not be used. He urged African Americans to fight  for their rights and fight against segregation. Du Bois helped form the NAACP, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. This association worked for the equal rights of African Americans. Another reformer Ida B. Wells wrote in her newspaper,  Free Speech. She spoke out against murders by lynching. All of these reformers helped shape the nation in many different ways to what it is today.

Gilded Age Past and Present

Gilded means "coated with a thin layer of gold paint." The Gilded age was between 1870s through the 1890s. During the Gilded Age there were concerns of what the government was keeping from the people.  The main concerns were a two fold. The first was that industrialist were becoming wealth at the expense of the public. The second was corruption and dishonesty in government with things like bribery and voter fraud. We have a similar period going on in this time of economic crisis. We all know that the economy is in a bad period. The unemployment rate is unusually high, many people cant find work.  One of the major issues that government have tried to cover up is overspending. Going over budgets, that kind of stuff. Especially with all the money that was used to pay for the war. In the past Gilded age one of the fears was  bribery happening in politics. Something that happened today was the case of Rod Blagojevich. He was bribing people by selling Obama's senate seat and making deals with the people who funded his campaign. So a lot of this stuff does still happen today. I think one of the main reasons that the public doesn't realize the problems that are happening in government is because people focus on gossip. I have a personal experience with this from a few years back when President Obama was about to take office. No one was talking about what changes Obama was going to make or how he was going to help our country in this economic crisis. Instead all people were talking about was what Michelle Obama was going to be wearing to the inaugural speech. This wasn't just in my family but I also saw this on New channels. So sometimes you have to look past the gold paint to see what really falters beneath it.  

5 Powerful Sentances

In many cities, powerful politicians called bosses controlled work done locally and demanded payoffs from business.Chapter 19 section 1.

 The way that people would cheat people out of there money was just morally wrong. But that's why history was written by the winners. People like William "Boss" Tweed knew how to appeal to there audience. He knew that there were a lot more poor people than rich and he needed there votes on his side. So by giving them what they wanted he was able to get what he wanted. This is why nothing really ever changed for so long, because the rich would always have something over the poor.

The Progressives were a diverse group of reformers united by a belief in the public interest, or the good of all people. Chapter 19 section 1

The progressives wanted everyone to unite and come together to work toward the same goal. They want the public interest to come first, for it to come before anything. My take on  the progressive views are pretty positive. I mean they were all outcasts. The poor, immigrants, women and African Americans were all outcasts but there were so many more of them. And they finally realized how many more of them there were, and they realized that they could actually work together because they all wanted the same thing. In this sentence I really like the words diverse, united and all. I think these words pretty much sum up what progressives were all about.

The press played an important role in exposing corruption and other problems. Chapter 19 section 1

The muckrakers, or crusading journalists, were the press. They really knew how to find a surprising amount of information on businesses. No one could really be sure where or how they got there information, or how accurate it was but it sure shocked a lot of people. Including president Theodore Roosevelt. Because of what Roosevelt read in The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, meat packaging plants were inspected. Also muckrakers said things against food and drug companies, so Congress in response passed the Pure Food and Drug Act, which said that it was required to have a list of all the ingredients on food and medicines. So its true that they played an important role. Because of all the exposing they did to corruption, many things were changed for the better.

Often, jobless whites took out their anger on blacks. Chapter 19 section 4

This state meant is so ridiculous. This is something that whites would do for "fun."They were only violent to blacks to make themselves feel better. Back then segregation was truly sickening. I even read an article in the Chicago Tribune from a little over a week ago talking about racial segregation that's still happening now. An African American family of three moved to Willowbrook, a dominantly white area. For several years they were receiving threats, hate mail and vandalism on their property. Even when they tole the police about this they did nothing. So its crazy that even in this day and age segregation is still happening after everything history has told us about it. Of course its not as violent as it used to be where people were murdered by lynching or other ways. But all the same its really remarkable.

Roosevelt was the first president to side with the strikers. Chapter 19 section 2

So far all the presidents before Roosevelt did basically the same thing, favor big businesses. Roosevelt was the first one that really tried to limit businesses and make everything equal. This was a really good thing for those who believed in the progressive views. Not only was the the first president to side with the strikers but he was the first person to actually listen to them at all. This was a positive step into making a social change.

Collusion

Collusion in government, or Crony Capitalism, is definitely present today. A recent case is Rod Blagovich. He tried to sell an open senate seat. This is just a case that came out. Imagine all of the under the table deals that happen behind closed doors that government officials are involved in. The Muckrakers of the early 20th century would be all over this. With all of the new technology they would be twice as effective. I don't understand how they went away in the first place. It's not as if the political corruption in America just went away in the 1960's. Corruption is always present. Politics is the definition of the saying "Power corrupts."