Sanitation+-+Kyla,+Hayoung,+and+Jenny+H.

**//Sanitation// During the Progressive Era** by Hayoung Woo, Kyla Page, Jenny Hwang



Sanitation in the Slums: Tenement Housings and Problems
**Problems:**  The Progressive Age was the years of massive industrialization and urbanization of the United states. Durin  g the Progressive Era, however, the increasing population of immigrants and the industrialization along with the ov  ercrowding urbanization created the problem of the tenement house- the dark, badly sanitized living quarters for the lower classes. The tenement house is well known as the dumb-bell tenement, where each floor has seven rooms on each side of the corridor and only four out of fourteen rooms have the ventilation in their rooms. Most of the other rooms are usually very dark and hum id, the most horrible and unsanitary place a family can ever live. A detriment to the lives of people, the tenement house became a intoxicated place with diseases, malnutrition, poverty and prostitution.  Even though the tenement houses were the “centres of disease, poverty, vice, and crime, where it is a marvel, not that some children grow up to be thieves, drunkards, and prostitutes, but that so many should ever grow up to be decent and self-respecting” described by T he Tenement House Commission, almost two third of the New York City population lived or were forced to lived in the polluted, and over-crowded buildings.

 //“Their “large rooms were partitioned into several smaller ones, without regard to light or ventilation, the rate of rent being lower in proportion to space or height from the street; and they soon became filled from cellar to garret with a class of tenantry living from hand to mouth, loose in morals, improvident in habits, degraded, and squalid as beggary itself.” It was thus the dark bedroom, prolific of untold depravities, came into the world. It was destined to survive the old houses. In their new rôle, says the old report, eloquent in its indignant denunciation of “evils more destructive than wars,” “they were not intended to last. Rents were fixed high enough to cover damage and abuse from this class, from whom nothing was expected, and the most was made of them while they lasted. Neatness, order, clean-liness, were never dreamed of in connection with the tenant-house system, as it spread its localities from year to year; while reckless slovenliness, discontent, privation, and ignorance were left to work out their invariable results, until the entire premises reached the level of tenant-house dilapidation, containing, but sheltering not, the miserable hordes that crowded beneath mouldering, water-rotted roofs or burrowed among the rats of clammy cellars.” Yet so illogical is human greed that, at a later day, when called to account, “the proprietors frequently urged the filthy habits of the tenants as an excuse for the condition of their property, utterly losing sight of the fact that it was the tolerance of those habits which was the real evil, and that for this they themselves were alone responsible.” ” (Jacob Riis, How the other half lives: The Genesis of Tenement)//  This primary source written by Jacob Riis who was the well known activist reinforces the idea about how brutal the lives of the tenement holders were during the progressive era. Not only suppresse d in the hidden, dark places, but polluted air, easily infective diseases and the harmful condition in general also caused the poor lives styles of the lower class people during the era.

**Possible Solution:** One of the major problem that hinders the possible solution of moving the whole residents to the new buildings is that about two third of the New York City population live under the same condition. It is clearly very difficult, inefficient, and time-consuming to move the massive population out of the building, break the olds, and build the new buildings all over again. Overcrowded with uncontrollable number of immigrants and the workers, the city just would not be able to handle the massive moving. Thus, the indispensable steps are needed. Since only the lights were provided in the old tenement house rooms, porches and additional lights could be provided in the each room. Most importantly, the air-shaft could be removed in order to let the ventilation easily accessed for each individual rooms, in that it will help better air Also, in the previous tenement house’s condition, bathrooms and closets were shared by ten or more families, which allowed the spread of dis eases. <span class="s1" style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Therefore, constructing the individual bathrooms, and water closet for individual family’s apartment could reduce the possible damage and enhance the sanitary condition.

**Plan:** <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">The education is always the indispensable obstacle that every problem during the Progressive Era faces. The lower classes with illiteracy get excluded by the powerful society and unwillingly have to accept the detrimental condition in their daily lives and working places. However, with the problem of damaging condition of the tenement housings, the education of awareness of possible diseases, sanitary aids, and self-protection from the harsh circumstances of living under the condition is needed. Therefore we recommend the act that educates the residents in the tenements house about the possible diseases and the needed protections they need to prepare for. Also, the issue should be publicize to the public, not only to the residents but also the broader audiences, about the reality of lower class people’s lives and their desperate help. This active movement would trigger the government to be aware of the lives of people under the rapid urbanization and the need for reform movement for their lives.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Problems:
<span class="s1" style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">During the Progressive Era, industrial capacity greatly increased due to the inflow of immigrants creating a huge unskilled labor force, and the use of natural resources by the expanding railroads. Because of the expanding industry in the northeast, conditions in factories and in mines and the like degraded. Workers were exposed to dangerous and unsanitary surroundings for large portions of their days, since at the time they were forced to work long hours for minimal wages. Every day people were breathing in chemical toxins along with metallic and orange dusts. The expression "mad as a hatter" came out of the Progressive Era due to the mercury poisoning many workers in the felt hat industry obtained. Not only were workers breathing in toxic substances, but their clothes, hair, and bodies were covered in them. Eating at home was even dangerous because they would eat off of their poisoned hands, consuming the toxins they had been introduced to in the factory.

<span class="s1" style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Sanitation in the workplace not only affected workers, but consumers, as well as raising concerns about other public health and safety issues. One of the most worrisome of which was infectious diseases. Consumers especially were concerned about the cleanliness of their products as they were afraid of catching whatever diseases the workers might have. This just shows the uncleanliness of factories if the middle-class was worried about the workers health. Many businesses tried to pawn off the culpability of health and diseases on the immigrants due to their own habits and conditions in order to take the blame off of themselves.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Possible Solutions:
<span class="s1" style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Education became a much more prominent part of children’s lives in the Progressive Era, but when it was mostly exclusive of the working class. Part of this was the fact that many poor children were forced to work all day, taking away their time to go to school and having no money to waste. If education were more available to the working <span class="s1" style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">class, it would open up more opportunities for them. Not only to get out of the slums and find better jobs, but to help improve the living conditions of those like them.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;"> <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;"> Also, if the government were to create laws stating the requirements for factory, mine, or other workplace conditions, owners would be forced to oblige. If not, by having inspectors come around and visit factories every once in a while would ensure that they were adhering to the laws. This would greatly i mprove working conditions and create a healthier environment where a large portion of the population spend half of their lives, if not more. An additional benefit would also be to set the consumer’s minds at ease over being infected by products created in unsanitary conditions. Not only is this favorable to workers and consumers, but with the consumers confident in the uncontaminated products, they will be more inclined to by those products which may increase the demand.Having limited or no education crippled the working class, keeping them stuck in miserable working conditions. If this were improved, they would have the option of upgrading their workplaces to fit their sanitation needs.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Plan:
<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">In order to improve sanitary conditions in the workplace, we must influence both the working class population as well as the factory owners.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">First, we will begin by educating the working class. Public education has become more accepting of the lower class, but many children don't have the money or the time to go to school. We recommend introducing an act requiring children from ages seven to thirteen to attend school four days a week for a minimum of three hours. We suggest putting up propaganda around cities promoting education and schooling to encourage it amongst the working class. Since most are, using images would be more successful. We would recommend longer hours, but we understand why some children must work to support themselves and thus do not want to encroach on their livelihood. We believe that this may begin the education of the lower class until it is possible to prevent child labor completely and they may all attend school. The illiteracy of the working class is one of the largest setbacks for them overall.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Our second recommendation is intended to affect factory owners through the government. For this our task force appeal to the government to enforce factory sanitation requirements. A law should be passed for a health inspection every month. The requirements would include a clean bathroom in which workers would be allowed to wash their hands before and after shifts __with__ soap. Also, floors and machinery should be cleaned in factories. And inspector will go around and make sure the materials being used are harmless to the workers (such as the mercury in the felt hat industry) or at least that the necessary precautions are made to reduce the amount of exposure to these toxins. With these inspections, factories will be forced to prevent health hazards, as well as keep workers from getting sick from dangerous toxins.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">These two plans will surely help eliminate most of the root causes of unsanitary conditions in factories by educating the workers on the effects of such conditions which would encourage them to keep their areas clean, as well as forcing factory owners to comply with these needs despite the cost.

<span style="color: #e4523a; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Sanitation's Effect on the People
<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 135%;">**Problems:** <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 105%;">The quick industrialization and rapid growth of cities gave birth to filthy ventilation, poor air quality and inadequate sewage system. The packed people in tenement houses provided for Diseases such as tuberculosis, cholera, and yellow fever began to spread and threaten the people in the cities.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 105%;">Also, there is the consumer foods explosion created by the Second Industrial Revolution. Due to the unsanitary conditions in the factories and industries, the consumers' concern of the products such as meat, baby foods, medicines and countless more. Additionally, the United States markets were besieged by an influx of patent medicines that claims to cure anything but were filled with a bunch of ludicrous and unscientific ingredients that worsened the ignorant people's health. The people are ignorant of what these diseases are and what they are consuming. In medicines, Cocaine is found to relieve headaches, Heroins are used to cease baby's cries, and absurd ingredients are being used under false names.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 135%;">**Possible Solutions:** <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Education on proper sanitation of the workers' in the food industries is adequate. The consumers also have the right to know what they are consuming and what is going on the table of their own families. In order for this to happen, the awareness of these problems must be raised. Something accessible to all people should display these dangers and the filthiness of these conditions. The government should work to pass the policies that will protect the consumers and the workers. They should also seek to develop the sewage system and build buildings upwards to provide space for people to spread out, not stay packed, where disease is more likely to spread from one person to another. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 105%;"> .

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 105%;">Each workers must be educated with the rules to keep the factories clean and sanitary before they actually handle the food. Starting with the basics such as washing hands with clean water, ensuring the safety, keeping a spotless working place and etc. the workers should deal this with all seriousness. In addition, government should pay surprise visits to these facilities from time to time to keep the tension strong and ensure the cleanliness. As publishing is more developed and more accessible, writers should write and publish regarding the issues of health and sanitation, raising awareness and alerting the people of the problem and what is being done. Policies should be passed by the government to list the ingredients of what the food contains and the products in the market should pass an investigation to see if it's safe for the public or not. Those who do not follow these rules must be punished by fines.
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 140%;">Plans: **

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 105%;">Furthermore, the medical field should develop to cure the diseases rising. The government should fully aid in funding for research on these diseases and its cures. The public should be aware of how to prevent and how to tell the symptoms. In short, the public should be educated of these diseases and health problems. Also, the public should be educated to tell apart what has been passed as "safe for consumption" or not. They must be able to question if its safe or not.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 105%;">One of the most famous and significant work on this field is The Jungle by Upton Sinclair.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 105%;">//"The meat would be shoveled into carts, and the man who did the shoveling would not trouble to lift out a rat even when he saw one—there were things that went into the sausage in comparison with which a poisoned rat was a tidbit. There was no place for the men to wash their hands before they ate their dinner, and so they made a practice of washing them in the water that was to be ladled into the sausage. There were the butt-ends of smoked meat, and the scraps of corned beef, and all the odds and ends of the waste of the plants, that would be dumped into old barrels in the cellar and left there. Under the system of rigid economy which the packers enforced, there were some jobs that it only paid to do once in a long time, and among these was the cleaning out of the waste barrels. Every spring they did it; and in the barrels would be dirt and rust and old nails and stale water—and cartload after cartload of it would be taken up and dumped into the hoppers with fresh meat, and sent out to the public’s breakfast."// <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 105%;">(From The Jungle, Upton Sinclair)

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">The disgusting conditions of the meat packing industry is revealed in the above passage. Theodore Roosevelt, who was reported to have vomited after reading The Jungle, helped pass the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act, which among other things required ingredients lists, inspections, and fines.



<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">**Citation (MLA form)**

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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Greenberg, Brian, and Linda S. Watts. "Factory Reform." //Social History of the United States//. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2009. 42-48. Print.

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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">"The Progressive Era." //Susan's ProGraphics Homepage//. N.p., n.d. Web. 5 Feb. 2012.

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