mutual aid society

An urban organization that served members of an ethnic immigrant group, usually those from a particular province or town. They functioned as fraternal clubs that collected dues from members in order to pay support in case of death or disability.

tenement

A high-density, cheap, five- or six-story housing unit designed for working-class urban populations. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, they became a symbol of urban immigrant poverty.

vaudeville

A professional stage show popular in the 1880s and 1890s that included singing, dancing, and comedy routines; it created a form of family entertainment for the urban masses that deeply influenced later forms, such as radio shows and television sitcoms.

ragtime

A form of music that became wildly popular in the early 20th century among audiences of all classes and races and ushered in an urban dance craze. It was an important form of crossover music, borrowed from working-class African Americans by enthusiasts who were white and middle class.

yellow journalism

A derogatory term for newspapers that specialize in sensationalistic reporting. It is associated with the inflammatory reporting by the Hearst and Pulitzer newspapers leading up to the Spanish-American War in 1898.

muckrakers

A critical term, first applied by Theodore Roosevelt, to investigative journalists (such as Jacob Riis and Upton Sinclair) who published exposés of political scandals and industrial abuses.

political machine

A complex, hierarchical party organization, such as NYC’s Tammany Hall, whose candidates remained in office on the strength of their political organization and their personal relationship with voters, especially working-class immigrants who had little alternative access to political power.

National Municipal

League

A political reform organization that advised cities to elect small councils and hire professional city managers who would direct operations like a corporate executive. This approach originated in Galveston, Texas after the city was devastated by a hurricane that killed 6000 in 1900.

progressives

A loose term for political reformers—especially those from the elite and middle classes—who worked to improve the political system, fight poverty, conserve environmental resources, and increase government involvement in the economy.

“City Beautiful” Movement

A turn-of-the-twentieth-century movement that advocated landscape beautification, playgrounds, and more and better urban parks.

social settlements

Community welfare centers that investigated the plight of the urban poor, raised funds to address urgent needs, and helped neighborhood residents advocate on their own behalf. They became a nationally recognized reform strategy during the Progressive Era.

Hull House

One of the first and most famous social settlements, founded in 1889 by Jane Addams and her companion Ellen Gates Starr in an impoverished, largely Italian immigrant neighborhood on Chicago’s West Side.

Pure Food and Drug Act

A 1906 law regulating the conditions in the food and drug industries to ensure a safe supply of food and medicine.

Triangle Shirtwaist Fire

A devastating fire that quickly spread through a factory in New York City on March 25, 1911, killing 146 people. In the wake of the tragedy, fifty-six state laws were passed dealing with such issues as fire hazards, unsafe machines, and wages and working hours for women and children.

National Consumer

LeagueBegun in New York, it became a national progressive organization that encouraged women, through their shopping decisions, to support fair wages and working conditions for industrial laborers.

Jacob Riis

Danish-born journalist who included photographs of tenement interiors in his very influential 1890 book, How the Other Half Lives. He took police commissioner Theodore Roosevelt on tours of the NYC tenements to show him the impoverished living conditions.

Jane Addams

A college-educated middle-class woman who founded Hull House with Ellen Gates Starr. She saw her work at the settlement house as a “bridge between the classes,” a help to the poor and the middle classes idealists who sought to bring social change.

Margaret Sanger

Raised in a Catholic home, she became a nurse, volunteering in a NYC settlement house in 1911. She was indicted for violating obscenity laws by promoting birth control in her newspaper column, “What Every Girl Should Know.”

Upton Sinclair

Muckraking journalist who exposed the exploitation of laborers and the appalling conditions in Chicago’s meatpacking plants in his novel, The Jungle.

Florence Kelly

A Hull House worker and former Illinois factory inspector who founded the National Consumer League to advocate for worker protection laws.

Scott Joplin

The son of former slaves who grew up along the Texas-Arkansas border who introduced ragtime music to national audiences at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893.