Progressive Era Vocabulary Preview

Progressive Era Vocabulary Preview Industrialization Rural to urban migration Massive immigration

Gilded Age = name applied to post Civil War era to describe the greed and poverty that lurked beneath the surface of society

Progressive movement = middle class reformers who wanted to improve society

Can you think of any Progressives today?  

Villaraigosa – Progressive mayor Labor union – SEIU

Conservation = the idea that some wilderness should be preserved, while some should be developed for the common good

Muckrakers = journalists who wrote and took photographs about poverty and the corrupt side of business Upton Sinclair

Jacob Riis

More muckrakers Lewis Hine photo of child labor

Lewis Hine taking a photograph of children. Notice that the photographs not spontaneous, but staged.

Muckrakers today STEVE LOPEZ L.A. Times columnist

Woodward and Bernstein’s stories about the Watergate scandal forced the resignation of President Nixon in 1974

Political machines = An organized group that controlled the activities of a political party in the city; had some positive effects

Who Stole the People’s Money?

Political machines and corruption today in Los Angeles Delgadillo trying to explain why taxpayers had to pay for a car crashed by his wife

Mayor and girlfriend

Jim Crow: legalized segregation (separation) of races. 

Called “separate but equal” but it was anything but that

Jim Crow today? http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php? storyId=106538011 http://www.postgazette.com/pg/09191/982985-153.stm

Labor Unions 

Workers who join together to form an organization that collectively bargains for better pay and working conditions.

Strike = when workers refuse to work because they want higher wages and benefits or to protest working conditions

An example from today 

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-meocstrike10jul10,0,2584699.story?coll=lahome-center

Trusts = businesses that gained control of other businesses through buying of stock in other companies