HIST 405N Week 5 Discussion: Industrialization, Imperialism, and America’s Entry Into WWI

Required Resources

Read/review the following resources for this activity:

Textbook: Chapter 17 (section 17.4), 18 (section 18.3), 19 (sections 19.1, 19.2), 21 (sections 21.2, 21.4)
Lesson
Minimum of 1 scholarly source (in addition to the textbook)

Initial Post Instructions

For the initial post, pick two (2) of the following categories representing minority groups during 1880-1914:

Women’s rights activists

African Americans
Immigrants from southern and eastern Europe
Child workers
Great Plain Indians

Then, address the following for your selections:

Explain the socio-economic status and challenges of your minority groups at the turn of the century.
How did the Industrial Revolution affect your chosen minority groups?
Analyze how the Progressives brought reform to your selected minority groups. Do you find that the Progressives were successful in making government responsive and improve the conditions of your chosen minority group?

Follow-Up Posts

Compare your selections and analysis of selections with those of your peers. If they chose different groups, examine how yours are similar and/or different. If they chose the same groups, build on their posts by providing additional information about the groups that you have not already noted in your own post.

Writing Requirements

Minimum of 3 posts (1 initial & 2 follow-up)
APA format for in-text citations and list of references

Grading

This activity will be graded using the Discussion Grading Rubric. Please review the following link:

Link (webpage): Discussion Guidelines

Course Outcomes (CO): 3, 4, 5

Due Date for Initial Post: By 11:59 p.m. MT on Wednesday
Due Date for Follow-Up Posts: By 11:59 p.m. MT on Sunday

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This week 5, we will be discussing the Industrial Revolution.
Along with your textbook reading for the week, here’s some additional reading to consider about this subject.
https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-now/rise-industrial-america-1877-1900 (Links to an external site.)
The Rise of Industrial America, 1877-1900
by Richard White
Remember to use an outside resource in the main post, which needs to be on or before Wednesday.
Don’t forget to look over the discussion rubric as a reference when you are writing your discussion posts. If you have any questions, please post in the Q&A forum or email me:
Let’s get started… Prof. King

Along with your textbook reading for the week, here’s some additional reading to consider about the subject of events that would take us into WW1.
Tom Coffman, 1999, THE U.S., PHILIPPINES, AND HAWAII:
LEAP INTO IMPERIALISM, Retrieved from http://www.hawaii.edu/cps/US-Imperialism.html
Remember to use an outside resource in the main post, which needs to be on or before Wednesday.
Don’t forget to look over the discussion rubric as a reference when you are writing your discussion posts. If you have any questions, please post in the Q&A forum or email me:
Let’s get started! Prof. King

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During the time of Industrialization, I chose to focus on this new economy affected Child workers and the Great Plain Indians. While great strides were seen in urban industrial growth it led to several problems, not enough workers on the land and not enough workers, led to the exploitation of the American Indians and Children.  

Children were abundant and inexpensive labor for the growing factories. They were used in textiles where they had to help keep the thread from breaking in a hot and humid environment working up to 12-hour days.  At 12, it was legal form them to work in the coal mines, but they were three times more likely to die than an adult. Five-year-olds were forced to help peel shrimp and shuck oysters in the Seafood industry. 

The Progressive reformers wanted to save the children from the evils of big industry and were successful at enacting some state child protective laws. Their laws were inconsistent in their application. On one side was the family who needed the income from their children to survive. They argued these children would learn valuable skills so they would not need an education.  Manufacturers felt that it would hamper their ability to be price competitive.

Several Federal laws were proposed and defeated over the course of the next few years and child labor was never abolished.  Children workers become less in demand as manufacturing became automated and the sates begin to strengthen their child labor laws. (ActHartman, 2017)

The American Indians did not benefit from the Industrial Revolution either.  As families began to move away from the farm and into the cities to work in factories, it left a lot of land unattended and crops not being grown.  The Progressives came up with what they believed was a generous solution that would help the natives integrate into the U.S.  and the land would continue to produce. The land was sectioned out in small parcels, with not enough crops or animals to sustain a family. (Sendrow, 2017).  

The Progressives continued to push integration and started boarding schools for the children so they could be taken away from the savage customs and become more like the whites.  The adult Indians were enticed to give up their tribal ways though teaching Christianity.  (U.S. History, 2014)

  Sendrow, S. (2017). Dawes severalty act. In The Development of the United States, Third Edition. New York: Facts On File. Retrieved September 28, 2020, from online.infobase.com/Auth/Index?aid=239824&itemid=WE52&articleId=207966.  Dawes

ActHartman, M. (2017). Child labor, 19001929. In The Emergence of Modern America, Third Edition. New York: Facts On File. Retrieved September 28, 2020, from online.infobase.com/Auth/Index?aid=239824&itemid=WE52&articleId=200255. Child labor Explain how immigration affected America toward the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, especially in the cities, and describe the typical immigrant experience.

While Urbanization led to electric lighting, telephones, transportation, and skyscrapers, not everyone was experiencing this newfound luxury.  Under the Roosevelt administration, the US was experiencing a huge wave of immigration. More than 1 million immigrants were entering the country and between 1905 to 1907 3.5 million immigrants would come to Ellis Island.    Cannato (2020) describes how ships were on top of each other waiting to unload their passengers.   Cites were cramped, dirty, and ridden with disease.

The early immigrants were typically German, Irish, Nordic, and British regions and tended to move out west for land and the opportunities there. This group was much more similar to the Americans in dress and language and lived a better lifestyle.  The immigrants that came from the southern and eastern European countries such as Greece and Italy came over to America in the hope of a better life and wage-paying job, but also some were seeking refuge for political reasons or famine. This group of immigrants had darker skin, spoke numerous different languages, dressed differently, and had different religions.  For this immigrant, they were targeted as discriminated against and were considered taking from the American way rather than building it.   

These Urban cities were not prepared to handle the massive influx of immigration and so the US set about some measures to limit it. The American Protection Program was enacted to curb immigration because the immigrant would have to pass a language literary test.

The reformers wanted to help these people in the tenants and started a settlement house movement that helped provide day care and education and was focused on women’s needs. This was the beginning of social services and social workers. (U.S History 2014) 

Cannato, V. J. (2018). Theodore Roosevelt on immigration. In American Passage: The History of Ellis Island. New York: Facts On File. Retrieved September 29, 2020, from online.infobase.com/Auth/Index?aid=239824&itemid=WE52&articleId=553895.

Wepman, D. (2001). Immigration. In Immigration. New York: Facts On File. Retrieved September 29, 2020, from online.infobase.com/Auth/Index?aid=239824&itemid=WE52&articleId=208927.

          I agree that the urban areas were not prepared to handle the mass influx of immigrants. With crowds of immigrates coming into the US, and little understanding of the cause of illness by microbes, widespread disease outbreaks in major population areas encouraged Progressives to push the federal government to look for preventive measures. It is fascinating how crowded areas spread disease like wildfire. In 1887 a “Hygienic Lab” was set up on Staten Island to aid in diagnosing infectious disease among persons on docking ships (Boston University, 2020).  

          According to A Brief History of Public Health (2020), that Lab was a marine hospital that was later moved to Washington, D.C. and evolved into the National Institutes of Health. The Immigration act of 1891 required immigrants entering the US be required to have a health exam (Boston University, 2020). Ellis Island was the site of the largest health inspection center of the time. I can only imagine how the medical professionals were able to assess the people considering the language barriers and cultural differences of the immigrants. 

         The dawn of the 20th century saw San Franscisco citizens with bubonic plague and the polio epidemic was just beginning (Boston University, 2020). Fleas, rats, and unsanitary homes and food were huge public health concerns. Also, unsanitary working conditions were brought under inspection because of work related illness, such as excessive rates of tuberculosis amongst garment factory workers and lead poisoning in the pottery industry. By 1912, the newly formed United States Public Health Service was investigating human diseases and studying the city sanitation, water supplies, and sewage disposal systems in population dense areas. 

Boston University (2015). A Brief History of Public Health. https://sphweb.bumc.bu.edu/otlt/mph-modules/ph/publichealthhistory/publichealthhistory8.html 

I do agree with you that with the advent of Industrial Revolution, urbanisation started encroaching in making towns and cities as well and this the time when children were forcefully involved to work in unfavourable conditions in factories and there I believe that Progressivism acted as a boon which earned acts and rights for children and saved them from this tyranny. Moreover, I would like to add that nineteenth century is regarded as a most significant era in history because with the reflection of intellectual growth, it envisoned many unattended and marginalized section of society and there children, especially Black children succeeded in acquring a deserved space in the society through verse and prose, like Booker T. Washington’s autobiography Up For Slavery portrayed the struggle of a Black child in this age of Industrialism and such narratives signalled us towards the need of Progressive approach to improve the  condition of children widely. 