Hester Street, a feature film directed by Joan Micklin Silver, is set in New York's Lower East Side in 1896. The story concerns an eastern European Jewish woman making her way in America. The context of sweatshops, streets filled with pushcarts, and crowded tenements provides some of the ambiance of the time. The American Social History Project (http://www.ashp.cuny.edu): has produced a thirty-minute video, Heaven Will Protect the Working Girl. Framed by the 1909 shirtwaist strike, it deals with the world of immigrant working women in turn-of-the-century New York. Also in video format is The Island Called Ellis, a documentary produced by NBC and narrated by Jose Ferrer. Documentary film, old photographs, and contemporary footage tell the story of Ellis Island. Progressives, Populists and Reform in America (1890-1917), in video format and available from Guidance Associates, uses excerpts from contemporary and historical writings, speeches, photographs, drawings, and political cartoons to treat such figures as Jacob Riis, Jane Addams, William Jennings Bryan, and Theodore Roosevelt. The story of women's suffrage is told in One Woman, One Vote (106 minutes), available from Educational Film Center, 5101F Backlick Road, Annandale, Va. 22003.

Destination America consists of nine videos (fifty-two minutes each) available from Films for the Humanities and Sciences. Although each stands alone, the first and the ninth are bookends; the first deals with factors of push and pull for the migrants and the last deals with their descendants. The second video treats the Irish, the third the Norwegians, and thereafter, Jews, Poles, Italians, Germans, and the British. Still photographs, films, and interviews are aided by narrative throughout, and the result is frequently insightful and revealing. Each of the seven central videos presents a full sweep of time in the migration flow. They focus in on the group in question, a focus that results in some loss of a sense of the combined impact of the whole migration on the nation. PBS Video offers Journey to America (fifty-eight minutes), a fine introduction, and The Irish in America, a six-hour production in three parts that carries the story from before the Great Famine to John F. Kennedy and beyond. Students may also enjoy Charlie Chaplin's silent film, The Immigrant (twenty minutes), made in 1917, that shows Chaplin's masterful ability to convey a newcomer's travail in the context of humor.

Two filmstrips may be of interest. Prohibition: Can Morality Be Legislated? traces the prohibition movement, the prohibition amendment and its consequences, and the decision to repeal. Muckraking starts with classic muckrakers Lincoln Steffens, Ida Tarbell, Ray Stannard Baker, and Upton Sinclair and carries the story forward, showing the muckraking tradition in relation to Teapot Dome and Watergate. The filmstrips are available from Social Studies School Service. An interesting bit of Americana is available from PBS Video in The Wright Stuff (sixty minutes), dealing with the achievements of those two interesting brothers.

The text of Chapter 212 contains a number of suggestions for readings and some discussion of D. W. Griffith's film Birth of a Nation (1915). The subject of the film is Reconstruction. Its celebration of the triumph of white over black is a reason for considering it an artifact of the time in which it was made and shown rather that a source of historical information. In conjunction with Birth of a Nation, the instructor may consider showing D. W. Griffith, a fourteen-minute video biography from Films for the Humanities. The emphasis here is on Griffith's genius as a filmmaker.

The Progressive Era: Reform Works in America, a twenty-two-minute film, combines newsreel footage and photographs to show the dire conditions created by immigration, urbanization, and labor strife. Narrated by Melvyn Douglas, it carries the story up to the election of 1912. Documentary footage and personal biography are used in Theodore Roosevelt, a twenty-two-minute film that emphasizes the superior abilities of its subject. In like manner, Woodrow Wilson: Peace and War and the Professor President is a twenty-three-minute film that praises Wilson's return to democracy's first principles and his political skills. It is narrated by E. G. Marshall. Two short films, rather direct and not very profound, use newsreel footage and commentary to advantage: The United States in the Twentieth Century: 1900-1912 deals with TR and Taft; and The United States in the Twentieth Century: 1912-1920, with the Wilson administration. Each is twelve minutes long. All these films may be found in the Educational Film & Video Locator. Other documentaries dealing with significant figures include W. E. B. Du Bois: A Biography in Four Voices (116 minutes), an overview that touches Du Bois's debates with Washington and continues through Du Bois's life to his exile and death in Ghana. It is from California Newsreel, 149 Ninth Street, San Francisco, CA 94103. Another is PBS Video's TR: The Story of Theodore Roosevelt, a very complete and satisfying four hours about this colorful leader, and TR and His Times (sixty minutes), from A Walk Through the Twentieth Century with Bill Moyers.
Document Set 212-1

Muckraking: The Novel as A Force for Social Change

1. The Beef Trust Exploits the Public, 1902
2. Upton Sinclair's Attack on the Meat Packers, 1906
3. Theodore Roosevelt Describes the Muckrakers, 1906
4. Roosevelt Insists on Regulatory Legislation, 1906The muckraking literature of the Progressive Era provides an opportunity for instructors to introduce the novel as historical document. Perhaps no literary work of this period is a better example of popular literature as a force for social change than Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. The excerpts chosen for this unit should enable students to understand the novel as a propaganda instrument. Either a student research assignment or an introductory lecture on Sinclair's background will facilitate student analysis of the evidence.Not only will students become acquainted with the persuasive powers of the politicized novelist, but they can also explore the social problems of progressive America through literature. More significantly, these documents are designed to probe the political solutions advanced by both liberals and radicals at the turn of the century. Instructors might initiate discussion by asking students to define these terms, including their use during the progressive period. Debate might continue over Sinclair's solution to the problems created by unrestrained capitalism in an industrial environment, in contrast to the alternative approach implied in Theodore Roosevelt's remarks and the text coverage of his administration.As the origins of the Pure Food and Drugs Act and the Meat Inspection Act are discussed, instructors might also question the direct connection between the Sinclair novel and consumer-protection legislation. Both the illustration and Roosevelt's comments suggest long-standing and extensive public concern over the abuses documented by Sinclair.Given this concern, instructors might introduce the term muckraker and its use by the president in an almost pejorative sense, thus opening an even broader discussion of the overall intellectual climate of progressive America. Linking propaganda in literature to legislative achievement, students and instructors might explore the extent to which Sinclair's work had an impact in the legislative arena. This discussion could be enriched by a supplementary assignment (or lecture) on the work of Gabriel Kolko or Robert Wiebe, who express alternative views on the roots of reform.Another approach to the interpretation of these materials could emphasize student debates. Students might be asked to assume middle-class and working-class perspectives on the problems raised by Sinclair. Or the debates could focus on mainstream progressivism and on socialism as alternative responses to the social and economic problems of the Roosevelt era. These dialogues might lead to group conclusions on the explanation for the path chosen by Americans in the progressive period.In the final analysis, this unit should contribute to an improved grasp of the interpretive problems presented by literary sources. Moreover, conflicting ideologies will be explored, leading students to better understand the triumph of liberalism as well as the reality of a sometimes ignored radical challenge to liberal consensus.

Recommended Readings for Document Set 212-1


James R. Barrett. Work and Community in the Jungle: Chicago's Packinghouse Workers, 1894-1922 (1990).

Walter M. Brasch. Forerunners of Revolution: Muckrakers and the American Conscience (1990).

David Chalmers. The Social and Political Ideas of the Muckrakers (1964).

Louis Filler. The Muckrakers (rev. ed., 1980).

Lewis L. Gould. The Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt (1991).

Gabriel Kolko. The Triumph of Conservatism: A Reinterpretation of American History, 1900-1916 (1963).

John Laslett. Labor and the Left: A Study of Socialist and Radical Influences in the American Labor Movement, 1881-1924 (1974).

George E. Mowry. The Era of Theodore Roosevelt (1958).

Upton Sinclair. Autobiography (1962).

James Weinstein. The Corporate Ideal in the Liberal State, 1900-1918 (1968).

James Harvey Young. Pure Food: Securing the Federal Food and Drug Act of 1906 (1989).
Audiovisual Resources for Document Set 212-1


Cry of the Children (1912; feature film--20 min.). Film Classics Exchange, 1914 S. Vermont Avenue, Los Angeles, Calif. 90007.

Debs (videotape--30 min.). American People's Historical Society, 295 1/2 Maple Street, Burlington, Vt. 05401.

Muckraking (sound filmstrip). Educational Audio Visual, Inc., Pleasantville, N.Y. 10570.

Stockyards: The End of an Era (film--59 min.). AFL-CIO, Department of Education, Film Division, 815 Sixteenth Street NW, Washington, D.C. 20006.

TR: The Story of Theodore Roosevelt (videotape--4 hrs.). PBS Video, 1320 Braddock Place, Alexandria, Va. 22314-1698.
Document Set 212-2

The Rise of Women's Activism: New Responsibilities

1. Women in the U.S. Labor Force for Selected Years, 1890-1930
2. The Women's Clubs Embrace Reform, 1904
3. Rheta Childe Dorr Recalls the Shift to Social Activism, 1904, 1905
4. The Brandeis Brief States the Case for Protective Legislation, 1908
5. Justice David J. Brewer Affirms the Oregon Law, 1908
6. Dorr Describes the National Consumer's League Role in the Muller case, 1908
7. Jane Addams Links the Vote with Social Reform, 1906
8. A Feminist Argument for Suffrage and Social Justice, 1910The dramatic social innovations of the Progressive Era enable instructors and students to focus on the changing roles of American women at the turn of the century. Coincident with the acceleration of urbanization and organization for reform was the quickening of feminism as a social force. By stressing the activism of middle-class women's organizations, this chapter explores the social and political implications of the activities of female reformers. Moreover, it establishes a clear link between women's activities in the social-justice movement and the escalating pressure for their enfranchisement.Relying on the text for background, instructors might begin with an open-ended discussion of the doctrine of "separate spheres," which should establish continuity with several earlier chapters. This discussion might be guided toward an examination of women's organizations and their functions in the late nineteenth century, followed by analysis of the documents for insight on changing patterns in their Progressive Era activities.After examining the new emphasis on social housekeeping and moral reform, instructors might emphasize the case of Muller v. Oregon as an example of a social issue that drew the particular attention of women's groups. The Muller case offers a good opportunity to stage a classroom debate over the positions taken in the Brandeis brief and the Brewer opinion. Student groups might be assigned to research the legal cases for both sides, with different participants responsible for arguing separate aspects of the case. Equally challenging (and controversial) would be discussion of the case's long-term significance for the future of the women's movement, particularly the importance of the Court's rationale for protective legislation.Finally, the excerpts from the writings of Jane Addams and Rheta Childe Dorr should permit instructors to relate women's involvement in the social-justice movement to the drive for suffrage. Students might be asked to probe the documents for evidence bearing on the new rationale for enfranchisement. In this context a provocative follow-up question might explore the impact of the women's vote on social issues after the enactment of the Nineteenth Amendment.From this topic it would be a short step to the problem of women's influence in modern politics, including discussion of the abortive effort to enact an equal-rights amendment from the 1920s on. In fact, the entire chapter establishes past-present linkage by analyzing the factors that contributed to changes in the lives of twentieth-century women. (For further ideas see the OAF-FIPSE package Restoring Women to History: Materials for U.S. II. [1984].)By linking middle-class women's organizations with the drive for social justice, these documents acquaint students with an important dimension of progressivism. The chapter encourages students to explore one of the key components of the progressive coalition, whose efforts were vital to the reform successes of the Roosevelt-Wilson era.

Recommended Readings for Document Set 212-2


Paula Baker. The Moral Frameworks of Public Life (1991).

Olive Banks. Faces of Feminism: A Study of Feminism as a Social Movement (1981).

Lois Banner. "Women's Frailty and Special Legislation." Women in Modern America (1975): 110-111.

Jill Conway. "Women Reformers and American Culture, 1870-1930." Journal of Social History 5 (1971-1972): 164-177.

Allen F. Davis. American Heroine: Jane Addams (1973).

Alan Dawley. Struggles for Justice: Social Responsibility and the Liberal State (1991).

Aileen S. Kraditor. Ideas of the Women's Suffrage Movement, 1890-1920 (1965).

Robyn Muncy. Creating a Female Dominion in American Reform, 1890-1935 (1991).

Elizabeth Pleck et al. Restoring Women to History: Materials for U.S. II (1984).

Melvin I. Urofsky. Louis D. Brandeis and the Progressive Tradition (1981).
Audiovisual Resources for Document Set 212-2


Heaven Will Protect the Working Girl (videotape--30 min.). American Social History Productions, 99 Hudson Street, New York, N.Y. 10013.

The Long March of the Suffragists (videotape--50 min.). Time-Life Films, 110 Eisenhower Drive, P.O. Box 644, Paramus, N.J. 07652.

One Woman, One Vote (videotape--120 min.). PBS Video, 1320 Braddock Place, Alexandria, Va. 22314-1698.

What Eighty Million Women Want (1913; feature film--50 min.). Film Classics Exchange, 1914 S. Vermont Avenue, Los Angeles, Calif. 90007.

The Women Rebel (film, videotape--59 min.). King Features Educational Division, 235 E. 45th Street, New York, N.Y. 10017.
Document Set 212-3

A Commitment to The Environment: Conservation as A Political Issue

1. Theodore Roosevelt Recalls an Early Commitment to Conservation, 1913
2. Gifford Pinchot Urges the Management of Water Resources, 1907
3. The National Conservation Commission's Analysis of Wasted Resources, 1909
4. John Muir Calls for the Preservation of Yosemite, 1908
5. The Conservation Movement Under Attack, 1910
6. Muir's Plea to Save Hetch-Hetchy, 1912
7. Martin Dies Endorses Resource Development at Hetch-Hetchy, 1913Progressive interest in conservation and the actions of the Roosevelt administration on the issue offer an excellent opportunity for instructors to encourage past-present linkage. Exploration of the early development of the conservation movement and emphasis on presidential leadership will tap student interest in ecology and environmental protection. Furthermore, instructors should be able to help students see the relationship between the dilemmas of the Progressive Era and the problems that confront modern environmentalists.The conflict between resource management and the preservationist approach to conservation is ready-made for a classroom debate. Instructors might divide their classes into proponents of the conflicting positions or assign student study groups to key personalities in preparation for a role-playing exercise. In either case, ensuing classroom discussion can focus on the relative merits of planned use and preservation.A focal point for these discussions is likely to be the interplay of interested parties, some committed to the achievement of short-term economic gains and others motivated by aesthetic concerns. The debate over Hetch-Hetchy should highlight the conflict between material and nonmaterial objectives, which has long-term implications that will be readily grasped by modern students conditioned to the environmentalists' positions.The progressives' concern about conservation is the central theme in Document Set 22-3, which focuses on the origins of the conservation movement as well as Theodore Roosevelt's commitment to the protection of American natural resources. Instructors might use this topic to open discussion of the qualities of political leadership and the importance of the political process in implementing meaningful reform. Discussion could center on the reasons for the lag time between the emergence of conservationist sentiment in the 1870s and the significant steps taken during the Roosevelt administration. Subtopics would certainly include Roosevelt's political style and the progressive mind-set, including ambivalence toward corporate power and conflict over the resource management issue.Once students have gained an understanding of progressivism's internal dynamics, they can focus on the narrower test issue of the Hetch-Hetchy, which will pose the question of short-term/long-term considerations in a dramatic way. This discussion might encourage students to explore the complex reasons for the success of the advocates for development, an exercise that will compel them to return to historical context and help them to understand people of the past on their own terms. At the same time, the question of economic interests cannot be avoided, as students attempt to understand the decision made in 1913 and contemplate its significance for the future. As they evaluate the decisions made by the progressive generation, they will be forced to recognize the connections between the dilemmas of the pasts and the challenges faced by environmental activists of their own time. Equally relevant will be the recognition that politics, the political process, and enlightened leadership are essential to modern efforts to safeguard the public interest.

Recommended Readings for Document Set 212-3


Stephen R. Fox. The American Conservation Movement: John Muir and His Legacy (1981).

Samuel P. Hays. Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency: The Progressive Conservation Movement, 1890-1920 (1959).

Norris Hundley, Jr. Water and the West: The Colorado River Compact and the Politics of Water in the American West (1975).

Carolyn Merchant. "Women of the Conservation Movement, 1900-1916," Environmental Review 8 (Spring 1984): 57-85.

Roderick Nash. Wilderness and the American Mind (1982).

James Pednick, Jr. Progressive Politics and Conservation: The Pinchot-Ballinger Affair (1968).

Joseph Petulla. American Environmentalism (1980).

Elmo R. Richardson. "The Struggle for the Valley: California's Hetch-Hetchy Controversy, 1905-1913," California Historical Society Quarterly 38 (1959): 249-258.

Peter Wild. Pioneer Conservationists of Western America (1979).

Thurman Wilkins. John Muir: Apostle of Nature (1995).
Audiovisual Resources for Document Set 212-3


Battle for Wilderness (videotape--58 min.). Order "The Wilderness Idea," Direct Cinema, P.O. Box 69799, Los Angeles, Calif. 90069-9976.

Theodore Roosevelt and His Times: A Walk Through the Twentieth Century with Bill Moyers series (videotape--58 min.). PBS Video, 1320 Braddock Place, Alexandria, Va. 22314-1698.

Theodore Roosevelt: The Right Man at the Right Time (film--28 min.). Learning Corporation of America, 711 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10022.

TR: The Story of Theodore Roosevelt (videotape--4 hrs.). PBS Video, 1320 Braddock Place, Alexandria, Va. 22314-1698.

Yosemite: The Fate of Heaven (videotape--58 min.). Yosemite Association, P.O. Box 545, Yosemite National Park, Calif. 95389.