Unit 5: The Progressive Movement
 
Frameworks for America's Past




Click on the links below -




Teacher Key - for Unit 5



Review - take a quiz!

Historical photo sets

1.  The negative effects of industrialization

2.  Labor unions  

3.  The Homestead steel mill strike  

4. 
Women's suffrage (voting rights)  

5.  
The temperance movement
History food feature
How milk was made safe to drink
Exploring further
From primary sources:
  1.  Samuel Gompers Defends Labor Unions
  2.  Mother Jones for the Miners
  3.  Henry Ford's Progressive Wage Plan
Videos and
Internet sites



Students: Check with your parents for permission before visiting Internet links.
Workplace safety - 1865 to 1920  (a short video about workplace safety reform efforts in the Progressive Era)

Mother Jones and the March of the Mill Children  (a short video about the famous 1903 march for better laws against child labor, which was a key goal of Progressives)

Life in a steel mill town  (This is from a famous 1939 documentary titled The City. 
Watch from 4:50 to 9:40, the part of the film that shows a steel mill town.  The points the narrator makes in this clip, and all through the film, show that Progressive Movement ideas were still very much alive.)

School House Rock: Sufferin' Till Suffrage  (this fun video explains how women won the right to vote.  "Suffrage" means the right to vote.)

America around 1910  (a short video with scenes of America, rural and urban, in the 1910s)


Music:  The Entertainer  (the famous piano music in the style called ragtime, by African American composer Scott Joplin)
Consider also: America: The Story of Us TV mini-series, Episode 7, "Cities," has good segments about Jacob Riis' efforts to improve conditions in tenement neighborhoods in New York City, and about the Triangle Factory fire.  This widely praised production originally ran on the History Channel.  Less than $20 on Amazon for the 3 DVD set.

Masses and Millionaires: The Homestead Strike (DVD, 26 min., The Phoenix Learning Group) is a good dramatization of the famous strike at a Carnegie steel mill in 1892.  (Consider skipping the opening scene at a zoo, however, and start instead with the deadly accident in the steel mill to get students right into story.)






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   Copyright 2009, 2022 by David Burns.  All rights reserved.  As a guide to the Virginia Standards of Learning, some pages necessarily include phrases or sentences from that document, which is available online from the Virginia Department of Education.  The author's copyright extends to the original text and graphics, unique design and layout, and related material.