tr, progressivism, food, and medicine - us history teachers
TRANSCRIPT
TR, Progressivism,
Food, and Medicine
C. Rebuilding a Nation (ca. 1877-ca.
1914)
2.Increasing Influence and Challenges
b. Explain the origins and
accomplishments of the Progressive
movement
d. Evaluate, take, and defend positions on
the various U.S. foreign policies in the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
e. Analyze the causes and consequences
of the Spanish-American War
Contaminated Food
-Upton Sinclair, a muckraker journalist,
wrote a book called The Jungle.
-Just as Jacob Riis exposed the terrible
living conditions of immigrants, Upton
Sinclair exposed the unsanitary conditions of
food processing factories.
-This caused citizens to become concerned
about consuming mass produced food.
There would be meat stored in a great
piles in rooms…thousands of rats would
race about it….a man could run his hand
over these piles of meat and sweep off
handfuls of the dried dung of rats…the
packers would put poisoned bread out for
them; they would die, and then rats,
bread, and meat would go into the
hoppers together.
-Excerpts from The Jungle by Upton
Sinclair
In TR’s time, many were concerned
about the unsanitary way that meat was processed.
The Jungle of Chicago
-The Jungle was written with a focus on Chicago
life and also displayed how bad working
conditions were for those in the food processing
factories.
-Many Progressives felt that the only way to stop
these terrible occurrences from putting the public
health at risk was government intervention.
-Teddy Roosevelt asserted that he would use
government power to intervene, if Sinclair’s
descriptions proved true.
Making Food Safe
-TR appointed a commission of experts to
investigate the meat packaging and Upton
Sinclair’s claims of unsanitary conditions.
-The commission backed Sinclair’s claims.
Congress passed the Meat Inspection Act of
1906.
-The government began to force food companies
to serve food in a sanitary way. The government
also paid for the inspections.
The Pure Food and Drug Act
-Companies made outrageous claims to sell
products that did not work. Some children’s
medicine had opium, alcohol, and other drugs.
-In 1906, the Pure Food and Drug Act was
passed. The law called for label claims to be
backed by truth.
-Removing contaminations from medicine and
food was also required.
Many makers of
products in the early
20th Century made
outlandish claims
that were not backed
by evidence.
The
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