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The Progressive Era of American History

The progressives did help the current situation to a point, but there was still a tot of work to be done. Many people tried to find solutions to the issues that affected our country, but they could hardly be considered successful. The number of deaths caused by such things as disease from rotten meat and other unreported atrocities killed numerous people throughout the country. In Upton Sinclair The Jungle, the unsanitary’ conditions of the meatpacking industry were revealed and people were disgusted by the stark reality of it.

Spoiled rotten meat loud be stored in roans where it would rot and be further contaminated by the many millions of rats running over it. Then the workers of the factories would use poisonous chemicals to kill these rats, which were only partially effective. The result was spoiled meat ground up with rats, rat dung and the poison which had all been sitting and rotting for extended periods of time. (Doc H) People were dying from the disease that the spoiled meat spread, but not many people understood why until Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle.

Upton Sinclair was a socialist journalist who revealed the conditions of the meatpacking industry through a novel published in 1906 about the poverty that affected many immigrants, and the abuse of men and women’s labor for profit. The book alone cut meat sales in half. Two results of this publication was the Meat Inspection Act and The Pure Food and Drug Act. These acts cleaned up the meat packing industry to an extent. (Doc H) Women at this time believed that they needed the right to vote, which darted their crusade towards equal suffrage.

Women tried using different tactics to prove the extent at which they would go to for the right to vote such as hunger strikes, rallies, parades, and publishing articles. They believed that they had hard evidence that equal suffrage would benefit the country such as there are one third more girls in the country’s high schools at the time. (Doc F) This would lead people to believe that women were by far intelligent enough to vote.

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