The Turn of the 19th Century

According to the Outline of American History, Chapter 9, the late 19th century time of industrialization, with workers (including children) working 12 hour days. Unions formed to force improvement of working conditions, leading to riots. The early 20th century, however, was a period of reform. Upton Sinclair’s, novel, The Jungle, revealed unsanitary conditions in the meat-packing industry in Chicago. Journalists such as Ida M. Tarbell, who crusaded against the Standard Oil Company, became known as "muckrakers” because of their exposure of fraud and corruption in America’s large corporations. America’s government, led by presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, responded with laws that improved working conditions and restricted monopolies.

Chapter 13 of The People’s History of the United States, in contrast, focuses upon the turn of the 19th century into the 20th as a time of socialist challenge of the American system of democracy, with unions gaining in popularity and power until they forced changes in the working conditions. Then, at the end of Chapter 13, the United States becomes distracted from a focus on reform by the beginning of World War I.

After you read the chapters in both books, comment briefly about your opinion of these two very different portrayals of a turbulent time in American history.