The Nosy News
Kjersten Huddleston
Nasty Water
The sanitation/living conditions were awful in the progressive era. Immigrants were forced to live in extremely tight quarters which made diseases like cholera, tuberculosis and yellow fever prominent. The dead, the poop and the pee would be thrown into the streets and that led to the city's water source and you know where that leads; the water was ultimately the source of all of the diseases and death. It impacted history because those conditions are completely unfathomable now.
The solution to this issue was a sanitation reform. This reform set standards for homes, businesses, and factories. The legislation made it so that there had to be inspectors to inspect the sanitation and the cleanliness. Most of the first hired inspectors were women.
Your Kids Are Working More Than You Are
In the progressive era, the working conditions were so treacherous that kids would lose their arms and their hands in machines. Another factor that made working so dangerous was the buildings; they were also very unsafe. For example the incident with the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. 145 workers were killed at the fault of the inspector. This incident has such an impact on history because so many people were killed because the building in which they were working in wasn't safe.
There were many historical solutions: more safety exits in buildings, an age requirement for working in factories, a time limitation to how much a person could work etc. If these solutions had not been put into effect there would have been so many more deaths due to the unsafe working conditions.
Women's Suffrage
This political cartoon is about women's suffrage. It shows that to women, fashion and gossip are just toys that can be thrown around and nobody really cares. But what the women really do care about is their rights; but they are mainly concerned with the right to vote.
One pop culture aspect from the progressive era is railroads. In 1869, the transcontinental railroad was finished. This allowed the mass transportation of a variety of manufactured goods. The construction started in Nebraska and the opposite side started in Sacramento and the two lines met near Promontory, Utah.