Women, Children, Labor and the Progressive
Era Unit
Nancy Deaton
AHTC 2006 Summer Fellowship
Illinois State Archives, Springfield
High School US History
To download this lesson in PDF format, click here.
Day 4 – Goals of the
Progressive Era
Return to list of problems
brainstormed on Day 1, have students add to or modify challenges that women and
children face after reading the Factory InspectorÕs Report.
List
could include the following topics:
o
Women
¤
property ownership
rights
¤
independence and divorce
rights
¤
suffrage
o
Child Labor
o
Immigrant rights,
speaking English
o
Food and drug safety
o
Employment Rights
¤
Working Hours
¤
Minimum wages
¤
Workers rights, unions,
strikes
¤
Workplace safety
(lighting, air quality, cramped conditions, fire danger)
¤
Big business with too
much power
o
Housing conditions
o
Health Care and diseases
o
Education, illiteracy
o
Temperance (banning
liquor) and Vice (prostitution and gambling)
o
Family abandonment by
husbands
o
Political power for
average citizens
Provide
students with characteristics of Progressive reformers (middle class, white,
urban, college educated, native born).
Discuss what attitudes these Progressives might have had toward poor,
immigrant factory workers and how this might have encouraged them to support
paternalistic laws. Define paternalism
using a Concept of Definition Map and discuss. (Could connect idea of paternalism to
modern-day Chicago ÒBig BoxÓ Ordinance requiring WalMart to pay higher
wages/benefits to employees)
